Based on data from the most recent elections, this book examines state house races in four key states California, Texas, Michigan, and Virginia and creates simulations of campaign planning, strategizing, budgeting, fundraising, and winning in a variety of political contexts. The authors have not only researched and taught about these issues they have conducted campaigns, run for office, and served in government at every level from the local to the national. They have experience confronting questions of campaign ethics and crisis management, and they actively embrace social media in their work. Internet fundraising as well as campaign websites are among the many media subjects included. This is a book not just for candidates, campaign professionals, and students, but for all concerned citizens who want to understand the pathways of politics better.
Digital fundraising does not have to be a mystery. While technology and trends move quickly, there are fundamentals that rarely change that you need to know. From the Ground Up: Digital Fundraising for Nonprofits is a practical primer on the ways of understanding, building, designing and innovating an effective digital fundraising program. With a strong foundation, there's no limit to what you will be able to build. With this book, you'll have a firm grasp on the inner workings of: Digital tools, platforms, offers and integrations Websites that convert visitors into donors Email marketing and best practices for increasing email revenue Digital advertising strategies Analytics and conversion tracking for measuring ROI Design thinking for more donor-centric fundraising Social media for impact and meaningful engagement Introduction to donor journey mapping Systems thinking as a means to future-proofing your charity "Brock has taken solid fundraising strategy and brought it to life with a real-world guide to digital fundraising. In plain language, Brock is providing tactical and practical advice, rooted in insights that will drive results. This is a must-read for fundraisers." -Maeve Strathy This book is designed to be a handy, easy to use handbook that you'll want to have within reach. Ideal for someone starting out their career in fundraising, or someone that wants to bring their charity's digital program up to speed. About the Author Brock Warner, CFRE has well over a decade of experience that spans across every major nonprofit sector in Canada. He is a professor in digital fundraising at Humber College's Fundraising Management postgraduate program, and sought after presenter at fundraising conferences throughout North America. As a direct marketing account manager, he managed digital and print campaigns in healthcare, education, amateur athletics, humanitarian and domestic aid, and the environment. As a senior leader on the frontlines, Brock's efforts have largely been in international development and mental health. Brock completed his undergraduate degree at Wilfrid Laurier University, followed by a postgraduate certification in Fundraising and Volunteer Management at Humber College in Toronto. He is a Certified Fund Raising Executive (CFRE), as well as a longstanding member of the Association of Fundraising Professionals (AFP) Greater Toronto Chapter. He has also obtained the bCRE-PRO designation for a professional-level proficiency in Blackbaud Raiser's Edge.
Political campaigns today are won or lost in the so-called ground war--the strategic deployment of teams of staffers, volunteers, and paid part-timers who work the phones and canvass block by block, house by house, voter by voter. Ground Wars provides an in-depth ethnographic portrait of two such campaigns, New Jersey Democrat Linda Stender's and that of Democratic Congressman Jim Himes of Connecticut, who both ran for Congress in 2008. Rasmus Kleis Nielsen examines how American political operatives use "personalized political communication" to engage with the electorate, and weighs the implications of ground war tactics for how we understand political campaigns and what it means to participate in them. He shows how ground wars are waged using resources well beyond those of a given candidate and their staff. These include allied interest groups and civic associations, party-provided technical infrastructures that utilize large databases with detailed individual-level information for targeting voters, and armies of dedicated volunteers and paid part-timers. Nielsen challenges the notion that political communication in America must be tightly scripted, controlled, and conducted by a select coterie of professionals. Yet he also quashes the romantic idea that canvassing is a purer form of grassroots politics. In today's political ground wars, Nielsen demonstrates, even the most ordinary-seeming volunteer knocking at your door is backed up by high-tech targeting technologies and party expertise. Ground Wars reveals how personalized political communication is profoundly influencing electoral outcomes and transforming American democracy.
Before I started pastoring, I knew the call of God was on my life. Like most young pastors, I felt it was my time or my season, as some say. Like most young pastors, God had given me great confirmation and assurance that this was his leading in my life. However, once I got into the deep waters of pastoring, I quickly realized I did not know how to swim. It almost appeared that God was not fair, blessing some but allowing others to suffer. Well, now I know that’s not true. Many pastors waste precious years learning, not knowing what to do. Due to a lack of training, tutoring, and teaching, they are stuck in the week-to-week cycle of just going to church. Join me for a journey in church growth principles, giving you the ABCs of church growth. All you need is a little information.
After decades of scholarship on the civil rights movement at the local level, the insights of bottom-up movement history remain essentially invisible in the accepted narrative of the movement and peripheral to debates on how to research, document, and teach about the movement. This collection of original works refocuses attention on this bottom-up history and compels a rethinking of what and who we think is central to the movement. The essays examine such locales as Sunflower County, Mississippi; Memphis, Tennessee; and Wilson, North Carolina; and engage such issues as nonviolence and self-defense, the implications of focusing on women in the movement, and struggles for freedom beyond voting rights and school desegregation. Events and incidents discussed range from the movement's heyday to the present and include the Poor People's Campaign mule train to Washington, D.C., the popular response to the deaths of Rosa Parks and Coretta Scott King, and political cartoons addressing Barack Obama's presidential campaign. The kinds of scholarship represented here--which draw on oral history and activist insights (along with traditional sources) and which bring the specificity of time and place into dialogue with broad themes and a national context--are crucial as we continue to foster scholarly debates, evaluate newer conceptual frameworks, and replace the superficial narrative that persists in the popular imagination.
How did all species fit on the ark? Where is Jesus now? What is the purpose of heaven? These are questions many Christians have asked themselves, but they have also led many people to become atheists. This book doesn’t answer them; it shows how these questions are missing the point and explains how core Christian values arise naturally from the human experience and why these values are so important to live a life of contentment, despite all trials. This book combines knowledge in science (not pseudo-science) with understanding in wisdom texts including the Bible, Stoicism, and Taoism. It explains why forgiveness, optimism, gratitude, humility, and love are so important in our lives. Along the way, readers will learn about relativity, the size of the universe, the purpose of life, how to feel content, mental strength, and how Job expresses sentiments similar to Taoism. The book talks about Christian history, the effect of fasting on the body and mind, and stories such as the Frog in the Well. This book isn’t trying to convince the reader; it’s a journey through life, science, and religion that will certainly teach something new.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the longtime CEO and chairman of Starbucks, a bold, dramatic work about the new responsibilities that leaders, businesses, and citizens share in American society today—as viewed through the intimate lens of one man’s life and work. What do we owe one another? How do we channel our drive, ingenuity, even our pain, into something more meaningful than individual success? And what is our duty in the places where we live, work, and play? These questions are at the heart of the American journey. They are also ones that Howard Schultz has grappled with personally since growing up in the Brooklyn housing projects and while building Starbucks from eleven stores into one of the world’s most iconic brands. In From the Ground Up, Schultz looks for answers in two interwoven narratives. One story shows how his conflicted boyhood—including experiences he has never before revealed—motivated Schultz to become the first in his family to graduate from college, then to build the kind of company his father, a working-class laborer, never had a chance to work for: a business that tries to balance profit and human dignity. A parallel story offers a behind-the-scenes look at Schultz’s unconventional efforts to challenge old notions about the role of business in society. From health insurance and free college tuition for part-time baristas to controversial initiatives about race and refugees, Schultz and his team tackled societal issues with the same creativity and rigor they applied to changing how the world consumes coffee. Throughout the book, Schultz introduces a cross-section of Americans transforming common struggles into shared successes. In these pages, lost youth find first jobs, aspiring college students overcome the yoke of debt, post-9/11 warriors replace lost limbs with indomitable spirit, former coal miners and opioid addicts pave fresh paths, entrepreneurs jump-start dreams, and better angels emerge from all corners of the country. From the Ground Up is part candid memoir, part uplifting blueprint of mutual responsibility, and part proof that ordinary people can do extraordinary things. At its heart, it’s an optimistic, inspiring account of what happens when we stand up, speak out, and come together for purposes bigger than ourselves. Here is a new vision of what can be when we try our best to lead lives through the lens of humanity. “Howard Schultz’s story is a clear reminder that success is not achieved through individual determination alone, but through partnership and community. Howard’s commitment to both have helped him build one of the world’s most recognized brands. It will be exciting to see what he accomplishes next.”—Bill Gates
Ecological Economics from the Ground Up takes a unique and much-needed bottom-up approach to teaching ecological economics and political ecology, using case studies that focus on a wide range of internationally relevant topics, to teach the principles, concepts, methods and tools of these fields, which are seen as increasingly important in the context of the current triple social, economic and environmental crisis. This book provides learning materials which are grounded in the experience of Civil Society Organisations (CSOs), with case studies chosen by CSOs and developed collaboratively with leading ecological economists. The case studies come from Europe, India, Latin America, and Africa, and are presented thematically along three lines: 1) social metabolism and accounting methods, 2) institutions and participation, and 3) valuation and environmental policy tools. Core tools, concepts and glossary terms are embedded in topics chosen as a matter of urgency by activist organizations, related to mining and fossil fuel extraction, integrated transport infrastructure development, deforestation and agro-fuel production, sustainable tourism, waste management, wetlands and water management, payments for ecosystem services, natural disasters and hazards, and corporate accountability. Ecological Economics from the Ground Up has been designed to be an accessible learning aid for students of the sustainability sciences and for those CSOs that have recognised the value that ecological economics and political ecology tools and methods hold for their research and advocacy work.
