Overture, now part of the Yahoo Search Network, was the originator of the use of PPC, or Pay-Per-Click advertising. Overture forcasted that the web was quickly turning into the fastest and easiest system for making purchases and that very soon Internet promotion was going to reach record breaking numbers.

For an online shopper to choose one web site rather than another, that web site must be ranked high. Yahoo created a service that directs targeted consumers to any targeted website,creating higher visitor counts and more sales. Yahoo’s PPC service puts a company’s text link ad right in front of potential buyers as they search the ‘net. Using keywords that describe the item or services they are shopping for, Internet surfers get extremely targeted ads on the same page as their search results. Web advertisers don’t pay for running their ad until a shopper literally clicks on it, hence the term "Pay-Per-Click". That click, by the way, can cost as little as a nickle, or as high as a hundred dollars. But it delivers potential buyers right to an advertisers web site.

Any company or Internet web site owner can raise their websites targeted visitors using Yahoo’s Pay-Per-Click services. That means that whether you are in charge of 1 web site or 50 or just recently launched a 5 page affiliate site, you can start using Yahoo’s PPC services immediately. The rise in traffic and visitors that you will get creates more customers seeing your pages and your goods and services. Even a small percentage of successful sales, combined with a large amount of traffic can equate to a considerable amount of cash for you.

Reaching a regular, substantial flow of visitors should be the goal of every company-big or small. Both new and return visitors are the life blood of any business that wants a share of the billions being spent online.

Even though Pay-Per-Click may have started with Overture, today Yahoo uses many of the same functions as Google’s Pay-Per-Click service, Google Adwords. They are similar in their use of keyword and keyphrase searching to determine which ads will show in the results. When a "searcher" types in a keyword or keyword phrase to search for a product, the search engine puts out the results over several pages. On the right side of the results pages, and sometimes at the top, you will notice the text ads of advertisers that have placed "bids" on targeted keywords and keyword phrases.

As an example, you own a retail automobile parts website. You would choose keywords that cause your advertisement show when targeted consumers type words or phrases like Lexus gas caps. Don’t forget that any individual word or phrase can trigger your ad to be shown. You’ll most likely want to stay away from blanket search terms like Corvette unless you’re Wal-Mart and have a Microsoft sized advertising budget.

The higher the bid, the higher the advert will display on the results pages.

Generally, ads that are placed higher are clicked more often, but sometimes "more" isn’t always a success. If an advertiser isn’t converting a minimum average of clicks into sales, a few popular search terms can be the cause of a very costly campaign-very very quickly.

To insure a successful PPC campaign requires work. But Pay-Per-Click has taken the pressure off of needing a first or second page "regular" search listing, at least immediately. Some of the time you would have spent with optimizing should now be used for discovering keywords with little competition.

Using a retail automobile parts website as an example again, we can learn that the general search term tires and wheels brings back 51,200,000 results. It’s far too general of a term. But by qualifying the term, for example Toyota tires and wheels Austin Texas, not only are the results cut down by over 90%, but the number of advertisers shrinks as well-lowering the cost per click dramatically.

Performing even the most basic keyword homework can decrease the number of yourchallengers, increase your exposure, reduce the potential for false or blind clicks, and save you a lot of cash. The results you can accomplish by practicing real examination and investigation will be even more dramatic.

Real examination, actual testing of your ads and their click-thru rates and the discovering of hidden "gems"- niche keywords with almost no competition, may sound difficult and time consuming, but the software available today make it easy. Here is one resource for free keyword tools, no-cost software and links to dozens of additional sites with ongoing give-aways and free utilities. And finally, with all the talk and buzz surrounding Google these days, why the furtherance of Yahoo’s Search Solutions? I’ve never suggested not using Googles services; still, it’s easy to do what everyone else is doing. But with so much competition for online spending, it is now necessary to try and seperate yourself from your competition. Yahoo/Overture is a perfect place to start. Companies small and large have used Yahoo! Search since the late 90’s and have thrived.

While Yahoo cannot match the sheer volume of Google searches, that also means a few less competitors and a few cents less per keyword. And it appears to be the case that when you’re Number Two, you try harder, as Yahoo’s customer service team is bending over backwards for your business.

When you add those up, it equals more than just good sense. It equals dollars and good sense.

Jon Heller is the President and CEO of HellerNetWorks, a Small Business Internet Marketing firm based in Palm Springs, Ca. The creator of numerous respected and high traffic Alcoholism, Addictions and Mental Health Support portals, Jon founded and developed SoberRecovery.com and the Treatment-Directory.com, managing them until their sale in early 2006. An award-winning Journalist, Jon has recently returned to writing, while maintaining a small, exclusive client base that he consults on Internet Content, Traffic and Marketing.

- Jon Heller

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Credit card processing at Churches has emerged as a great way for churches to increase funds. Churches are following the leads of businesses who almost without exception accept credit cards as an effective way to increase revenue. Although technically a church may be a non-profit organization, it still has a specific purpose just as a business does. It needs to increase funds to accomplish that purpose. Church credit card processing increases the church’s ability to generate funds.

In the society of today it’s normal for people to have many credit and debit cards in their wallets, many tend to carry little cash. And so if when during the presentation of tithes and offerings, people don’t have cash in their pockets, the church will not get any funds. To combat this and make it easier for members to contribute funds, church credit card processing has increased.

Processing credit cards at church can help churches raise funds in many ways. First, the church can give its members the opportunity to make their donations through the use of their credit cards. That makes it convenient for those members who don’t carry much cash and frequently find themselves low on cash when the offering plate comes around. The church also benefits because the more tithing and contributions received through church credit card processing, the better the church is able to budget. The church knows in advance how much it has coming in each week, month, or year.

Church credit card processing may not work exactly as credit card processing in stores but, it still requires something similar to a merchant account. Instead of actually swiping your card physically through a machine, what generally happens is that you’ll fill out a form at church or online providing all of your credit card billing information, the amount you want to contribute to the church, and the frequency of the donations. This is called "Automatic Tithing". Some like to donate a larger sum annually, while others may prefer to donate a smaller amount each week.

The church credit card processing system will now take the member information and put it into an automated process. Now at the specified time interval, the members credit or debit card will be billed automatically and the funds will be moved immediately to the church’s bank account. Processing credit cards at church has made it really easy and convenient for both the church and the church member when it comes to giving.It also makes it very easy to do church fundraising by accepting credit card gifts and donations at the fundraiser.

The next step in church credit card processing is to be able to pay tithing via the church’s website. Church members would go to the church’s website and click on a link to a webpage where you could provide your credit card billing information and your contribution would be processed immediately.

This article was written by Todd Nelson, Marketing Director for Capital Merchant Solutions, Inc (HolyProcessing.com). CMS has been in the merchant account business for nearly 10 years, and offers free merchant accounts to both online and retail businesses. CMS also offers special programs for Churches and their members. One of these unique programs is called "Automatic Tithing", which allows Churches to allow their members to automatically donate using their credit card or debit card. This article may be republished as long as absolutely no changes are made, and the resource box is included. Copyright 2007 - Capital merchant Solutions, Inc. - All rights reserved.

- Todd Nelson

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Have you ever tried to get rid of an unconstructive behavior, only to not succeed? There is list of frequent problem behaviors that people often try to change or get rid of using hypnosis. The most common are: Overeating and weight loss; stop smoking; quit chewing tobacco; stop nail biting; increasing self-confidence; overcoming insomnia and sleeping better; improving memory; and managing stress.

WHAT THE MIND CAUSES, THE MIND CAN CURE: The motivation for our behaviors starts in our thoughts. When you stop and think about it, all of these unconstructive behaviors are the product of negative thinking. In other words, you think and motivate yourself into all of these behaviors. Or at least you think yourself into feeling stressed out, and that can be the origin of these behaviors. And since you think and motivate yourself into these behaviors, you can think and motivate yourself out of them as well. But in order to successfully think and motivate yourself out of them, you will need to know specifically how to go about doing so.

DESIRE: You’re most likely reading this expose for the reason that you want the motivation to make some personal changes. And that’s opportune for the reason that the first element in the "Motivation Formula For Your Success" is that you must want or desire to change. If you have read this far, at least a little part of you desires a change.

BELIEF IS REQUIRED FOR MOTIVATION: Before anyone can eliminate a negative behavior, that person must be motivated to do so. Merely wanting a behavior to change is not adequate.

Our motivation comes from what we believe. If we believe that something very important to us will get better or "become enhanced" if we make a change in our behavior, then we will feel motivated. Conversely, if we believe that something very important to us will be placed at risk if we don’t alter our behavior, we will also experience motivation to alter our behavior.

Some plain examples of these motivational beliefs would be:

If I take some weight off, then I’ll be able to find a companion.

If I kick my smoking habit, then I will not have to worry about cancer.

If I stop my nail biting, then my hands will be a lot prettier.

TECHNOLOGIES THAT CAN CREATE THE BELIEFS THAT LEAD TO MOTIVATION: Neuro-Linguistic Programming - which is commonly known as NLP, provides strategies that are able to instantaneously produce the element of belief. You can learn more on this topic by reading the articles "How To Get Motivated To Exercise Using Hypnosis And NLP" and "Motivation Theory - How To Quit Smoking Using NLP And Hypnosis For Motivation." These articles are both available in my free hypnosis research library.

DECISION: The dictionary definition of the word "Decision" is making up one’s mind / a verdict or judgment. When you accept as true an idea that provides you with a powerful feeling of motivation to modify your behavior, you will feel a compulsion to make a decision to eliminate a negative behavior. Decision is the key that unlocks the door to compelling action.

ACTION: The dictionary defines the word "Action" as an act or deed / to do or perform. Taking action means that rather than just thinking about making personal changes, you will actually take action and bring about your desired changes.

SELF-TALK: One of the many reasons that people are unsuccessful at eliminating a negative behavior is because of the way that they talk to themselves. Self-talk is significant because frequently it is an important part of what caused the negative behavior to begin with.

I’d like you to think about this for a moment: Let’s say that you want to stop smoking. The first thing that you might say or think to yourself is: "I’m not going to smoke anymore."

It’s universal for people to tell themselves what they are not going to do. Unfortunately, when we tell ourselves what we are not going to do, we are actually programming ourselves to do it!

SELF-TALK EXERCISE: Say the following to yourself: I can’t see blue. I can’t see polka dots . . . . . . .

I’ll bet your mind showed you the color blue, and then it showed you polka dots. That’s because when we tell ourselves what we do not want to do, or what we won’t do, in order to make sense of it our mind must make a movie of us doing whatever it is that we wish to stop doing. And when we imagine ourselves in a behavior, our mind compels us to generate that behavior.

SUMMARY: In order to modify a negative behavior, we must first want or DESIRE to eliminate it. BELIEF is the element that creates MOTIVATION. MOTIVATION is the drive that compels us to DECISION. DECISION is the means to ACTION. Neuro-Linguistic Programming is a technology that we can use to facilitate beliefs, motivation, decisions, and actions.

When we tell ourselves what we are not going to do, we make a mental picture of ourselves engaging in the behavior that we want to eliminate. And that mental picture gives us a compulsion to generate the negative behavior. So if we want to get rid of a negative behavior, instead of telling ourselves what we will not do, we must always tell ourselves what we will do.

To stop smoking say: "I can live without them."

To eliminate cravings for fattening food or to stop chewing smokeless chewing tobacco say: "I can live without it."

To eliminate stress say: "I’m relaxed and calm, both mentally and physically."

To sleep better say: "I fall asleep promptly, and sleep restfully throughout the entire night."

Alan B. Densky, CH is a certified hypnotherapist and NLP Practitioner. He runs the Neuro-VISION self-hypnosis CDs website and the Video Self-Hypnosis Blog. He offers NLP & hypnosis CDs for motivation. Visit the website for his free Hypnosis MP3 downloads, newsletters, and his hypnosis research library.

- Alan B. Densky, CH

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Foreclosures in 2007 are up significantly over 2005 & 2006. With many Adjustable Rate loans & Interest only loans on the market entering periods of recalculation, some borrowers are in a position of defaulting on the loan because they can’t make the higher payments. Consider in some cases the borrower has become a landlord and has a tenant. What is the tenant to do? Here are some tips:

- Communicate: With the Landlord. With a Real Estate Professional. Find out what your rights are. Do what you can to ensure that you don’t jeopardize your good credit or that no negative actions are being taken towards you.

- Try to Negotiate: The Landlord may have no room to negotiate, they may be holding you to the letter of the lease. But if the property has already been foreclosed upon & the bank is the owner, negotiate directly with the bank or their representative. By all means, avoid the eviction process.

- Make a Plan of Action: It is hard to plan with such short notice, but you as the tenant need to quickly move from a reactive move to an active stance in a short period of time. Discuss the possibility of you being able to obtain the property or a loan from the bank. Remember, they want to sell the Bank Owned / Foreclosure Northern Virginia Homes as quickly as possible and may be willing to work with you. Again, with a minimal amount of planning & communication you might just find out that you can afford a home yourself & thus consider the benefits of buying over renting. A Northern Virginia Real Estate Agent & their lending partners will be able to give you an answer about buying a home in Northern Virginia in less than 24 hours. Consider that this potentially bad situation could end up working to your benefit.

Robert Earl - Founder of The Earl of Real Estate Team is a Real Estate Entrepreneur & Real Estate Coach based in the Northern Virginia. Robert Earl’s Site presents Leesburg Condos for Sale - Leesburg Condo Communities

- Robert Earl The Earl of Real Estate

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Just about every second website you see these days seems to have a shopping cart icon on it, thanks to the growth of e-commerce and online shopping. It’s hard to believe that until the early 1990s, this type of commerce was non-existent. Now small offices and home business about with their own online shops about, offering consumers greater and greater choice of where to buy.

In order to get an good internet selling the entrepreneur is facing with almost as much choice in how to create their business as the customers they are trying to sell to.Finding a website host that can provide a reliable service at an acceptable cost is only one of the requirement to avail. There are numbers of choices that we can get

The so-called store-front is of really vital to an online business. This consists of the collection of webpages that those interested in your products will view over the internet and where they will hopefully fill up their shopping cart with everything you have on offer. Setting all this up is easy for the multitude of website designers who have decided to set up their own online retail business.

To set up your ecommerce website is a real headache if you are not aware of the complexities of HTML, Java and other jargon of the internet design industry .Some companies offers everything needed by a new online business at a monthly set price but this is not a good option as every business is unique and a single product cannot cater the needs of everyone’s needs.

Storefront software packages which are available in the market can help the new retail business owners to create their own websites due to their friendly interfaces. Templates provided along with these packages can be modified to suit the need of the individuals and at the same may keep the professional looking pages. The websites created from these packages can then be hosted from the business’ own server.

Using this method, however, can be time-consuming if you want to comply with some of the golden rules of marketing. It’s important to create a feeling of cohesiveness on your website, by using standardised web pages that will establish your own brand, and create trust in the customer. This way, they will be more likely to fill the shopping cart with items. As product lines and other factors change, you will also appreciate having a website that can be easily modified.

Whether you choose to create a site yourself or have others do it, it is vital that it is optimized for search engines. Since the vast majority of your customers will find you through web search engines it is important that you maximise your page rank. The ‘meta’ - the short description of each search result from a search engine is also crucial to attracting custom.

With the growth in on line shopping and ecommerce websites in the recent past entrepreneurs have choice but need to take care of a few requirements. Finding a reliable website host at acceptable cost is important and some professionals who work on storefront software independently can help here. Web language can be confusing and businesses can create their own sites with shopping carts but one stop solutions provided by some companies may not suit everybody. Finally it is important to have cohesive feel for the website through a unifying look of the pages, making sure the website is flexible and that it is optimized for search engines.

- jason ciment

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The are several types of church fundraising ranging from tithing collected during religious services to direct mail campaigns, phone solicitations, and specific types of church fundraising events like gala dinner events or bake sales. But regardless of the types of church fundraising chosen, there are a few simple principles that should be examined.

The first principle is that successful fundraising requires careful thought and planning. The second is that no organization should rely so much on a single funding source that the group would not be able to function without it. All types of church fundraising planning needs to be guided by this second principle because an organization that is totally dependent on a large fundraising donation from one person is extremely vulnerable.

The organizations that put forth the effort to use diverse types of church fundraising such that the loss of any one source of contributions would not have a large impact is clearly in a strong position. For example in 1869, the Metropolitan Museum of Art turned solely to the wealth citizens of New York City for support. More than a century later, it still gets support from wealthy citizens but it also receives aid from local, state, and federal governments, and from corporations and foundations as well. Sure this is just an art museum and not a church but don’t lose sight of the bigger lesson here in terms of diversifying the source of donations and not being overly reliable on any single source of funds.

Today, diversification of fiscal support is critical and no organization can generally expect to fund its work repeatedly from any single source. Even if the organization succeeds in getting one huge grant, it cannot and should not be realistically expected that the grant will be renewed every year, and the future of the organization is far from secure. Furthermore, funding sources prefer seeing that a nonprofit organization’s funding is indeed well-diversified because this shows a consensus that the organization is important and worth supporting.

By becoming associated with all types of church fundraising supporters, fundraisers can select those most appropriate to their own organization. Remember, it is not very likely that all your supportes will show interest in your campaign, and so, with limited fundraising resources, you will need to choose the opportunities you are most likely to win.

Philanthropy can be traced back to individuals rather than to governments, businesses, or foundations. The founding philanthropists of the United States were individuals such as Benjamin Franklin whose generosity and vision led to the making of several of Philadelphia’s earliest nonprofit organizations.

During the Middle Ages, Europe’s cathedrals were constructed not only through the largesses of queens, kings, and other nobility but also through the generosity of artisans and trade people. Many members of guild and merchant associations, including bakers, carpenters, weavers, shoemakers, butchers, masons, fishmongers, furriers, and other contributed to the building of the famed cathedral in Chartres, France; their funding underwrote the creation of many of its breathtaking stained glass windows. Church fundraising goes way back in time, as you can see.

This article was written by Todd Nelson, Marketing Director for Capital Merchant Solutions, Inc (HolyProcessing.com). CMS has been in the merchant account business for nearly 10 years, and offers free merchant accounts to both online and retail businesses. CMS also offers special programs for Churches and their members. One of these unique programs is called "Refer a Congregation", which allows Churches and their members to earn money. This article may be republished as long as absolutely no changes are made, and the resource box is included. Copyright 2007 - Capital merchant Solutions, Inc. - All rights reserved.

- Todd Nelson

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Have you ever heard of Conversational Hypnosis? It’s likely you haven’t. The reason is that the people who practice this type of hypnosis are not advertising for clients who are willing be hypnotized to stop smoking or lose weight, or become confident, or anything else you can learn to do with hypnosis. In fact, the people who use conversational hypnosis hope you never find out they used it, or you might get a little angry.

Many sales people are very familiar with conversational hypnosis, but it is also consciously, and sometimes unconsciously, used by those who seem to always get what they want. The people who are successful at conversational hypnosis are the people you believe in. For some reason you just trust them, and whatever they say seems to be the right thing. There is a natural ability that some people have that makes conversational hypnosis an everyday thing. (which is why I said they could be using it unconsciously), but for most people, it takes practice.

Unlike regular hypnosis, where one person is put into a trance while the other person speaks softly and/or asks questions, Conversational Hypnosis occurs when two people are just talking to each other, or so it seems.

Actually, one person is doing most of the talking, and the other seems to be listening and agreeing.

Cleverly, the main person talking is doing so in a way that influences the listener to follow their lead. They use their tone of voice along with what they say to influence another person’s decision. A professional at this type of conversation knows when you are going to say ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ And, if they feel a ‘no’ coming on, they will immediately change your mind before you even realize that you were going to object. Not only that, but they can even make you forget that you originally had objections, until the only thing left for you to do is buy, or agree that they’re right and then wonder what happened later.

If you talk with your hands, or use basic body language, you can be persuaded very easily by a conversational hypnotist because they are very good at reading this language; it’s a lot easier to read than just trying to determine what a person is saying.

So, what are the chances that you have ever been the victim of this type of hypnosis? Well, have you ever had what’s called buyers remorse - where you went to buy one thing, and somehow bought something much more expensive than you ever thought you would, and just didn’t know what made you make that expensive purchase. On your way home, did you ever find yourself trying to convince yourself, or figure out how to tell your spouse or significant other that this was a good purchase, even though you now don’t believe it yourself? Then, you were probably the victim of Conversational Hypnosis.

This happens all too often, and its not a good feeling when you figure it out. However, if you know a few simple facts, you can be in control at all times. Then, you can be confident in your yes or no decision, and either stick with it, OR, make these people do what you want for a change!

Find out more about the stages of Conversational Hypnosis including: - How To Absorb a Person’s Attention and influence them to follow your lead - How To Bypass The Conscious Mind and get just about anyone to say ‘Yes’ - Your Ability to Access Unconscious Responses and increase your negotiation abilities - Amplify & Direct The Unconscious Responses

Evelyn Grazini is the Author of Directed Dreaming. Her specialty is Self-Help information including Dreaming, Hypnosis and Stress Relief. Find out more about Conversational Hypnosis and get free Lucid Dreaming/Hypnosis Reports.

Lets take a look at the choices and models available to you.

HouseValues.com: HouseValues.com counts on site visitors to answer about two dozen questions, which are then forwarded to a local agent who pays for the lead. Agents prepay for service areas. When leads are received by HouseValues.com, they are sent to the agent for the area. These leads are assigned to Agents that prepay a monthly amount to secure an area or selected zip codes. According to reports regarding HouseValues.com "A weaker residential housing market has hurt. The end of the speculative boom is making homeowners, resale renovators, and condo-flippers less interested in knowing what their homes are worth. Cash-strapped Realtors are backing out of the program." This begs the question, how accurate is the values that a home owner ultimately gets from the system? and what is the motivation of the agent to provide an accurate value?, a topic that will be covered in just a moment.

Zillow: As puzzling as where they got their name is where they get the data from. Countless stories have arisen regarding the wrong information being recorded about properties # of bedrooms, bathroom, size, etc. No weight is given for overall condition or improvements. There own website states the following: "Our data shows that the majority of our Zestimate home valuations are within 10% of the selling price of the home. Of course, to a certain extent this depends on the accuracy of the home data we receive." 10% is the difference between your home selling and your home sitting. Fact is, with the average Sale price of Northern Virginia Homes for Sale being $507,546.40 in June of 2007, that is an amount of over $50,000 that the Zestimate could be off.

Homegain.com: Another data collector or lead generation engine like Housevalues.com. Inquiries from curious homeowners are posted to the site that Agents post resumes to, allowing the home owner to "compare agent". Homegain takes a minimum of one third of the commissions from the listing agent as a "referral fee" leaving the agent with very little money or incentive left to spend on attracting buyers to your home.. This leads to Agents given a proposed selling value that is higher than the marketplace or at least higher than the other homegain agent proposal in an attempt to win favor from the home owner, trying to secure the listing. This ultimately could cost the homeowner money.

Consider what happens when a house is put on the market for sale, the initial wave of buyers is the most important. When a house is overpriced, they categorize the home as overpriced, they move on to other properties & the Homeowners end up having to eventually dropping the price below market value just to get the attention of the market again.

All this becuase the agent was trying to gain favor or recover upfront cost (Housevalues) or cover referral fees (Homegain) in the end.

Add to this that all of the previously mentioned systems are online based systems. A computer for an online evaluation has not way of telling the condition of the property & how it actually compares to those that are currently listed or recently sold. A Comparative Market Analysis performed by a Local Realtor: Best bet is to have a comparive market analysis performed by a local real estate agent with specialty and expertise in your particular market & area. A good CMA lays out the comparison of the owners home to other homes that have recently actually sold and it also provides an opportunity for the Agent to show the techniques & marketing strategies that they will use to ensure that the home owner gets top dollar.

Robert Earl - Founder of The Earl of Real Estate Team is a Real Estate Entrepreneur & Real Estate Coach based in the Northern Virginia. The Earl of Real Estate Team specializes in Herndon VA Real Estate, Condos, Townhomes & Homes for Sale

- Robert Earl The Earl of Real Estate

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In today’s highly competitive world of nonprofit fundraising, church fundraising ideas must involve seeking and creating donations from a diverse mixture of both institutional and individual sources in order to remain possible. There are many traditional and new church fundraising ideas to be evaluated.

All churches are encouraged to solicit as many of these sources as is appropriate and practical in order to develop the largely diversified support base that is so vital to a religious organization’s health. Fortunately, the vast number of individuals and institutions that support church fundraising ideas around the world attests to universality of the philanthropic instinct.

People lend support in a number of ways such as making donations and pledging contributions in response to post cards and letters, web pages on the internet, telemarketing phone calls, door-to-door fundraising efforts, and eye-to-eye solicitations. There are some great church fundraising ideas in that list of activities.

Individuals also contribute at their offices through workplace solicitation and payroll deductions and consult their financial advisers to choose planned giving vehicles. Individuals also contribute in their communities by attending special events and purchasing services and goods from nonprofits, ranging from gifts, cards, and theater tickets to school tuition and hospital care. More church fundraising ideas there.

Institutions providing both in-kind and financial support to nonprofit organizations include foundations; corporations and businesses; governments at all levels: local, state, and federal; religious institutions; and labor unions. Additionally, thousands of local and national civic associations, usually nonprofit themselves, extend some kind of aid to charitable and philanthropic undertakings as do federated fundraising organizations.

Using these church fundraising ideas is the ongoing work of those who raise money for churches. Their work, properly referred to as development by fundraising professionals, encompasses a wide range of activities, only one of which is the actual solicitation of individuals and institutions for financial support. Development work ranges from organizing a street fair to raise several thousand dollars, to meeting with business and social leaders to develop an invitation list for a special event with a $350,000 goal, to taking on a yearlong planning process for a $10 million capital campaign.

Development activities for church fundraising ideas include designing and writing proposals, solicitation letters, direct mail pieces, and newsletters. Development activities also include meeting with staff members of other nonprofit organizations to seek advice, creating joint programs, or going over fundraising schedules to avoid conflicts as well as meeting with board and committee members and officers to build relationships, discuss work in progress, identify and discuss problems, or go over candidates for volunteer leadership jobs.

All these jobs are undertaken to raise money in the constantly changing, complex, vast, and highly competitive world of nonprofit finance. Large though this range is, two fundamental principles lie at the center of church fundraising ideas: diversity and planning.

This article was written by Todd Nelson, Marketing Director for Capital Merchant Solutions, Inc (HolyProcessing.com). CMS has been in the merchant account business for nearly 10 years, and offers free merchant accounts to both online and retail businesses. CMS also offers a unique program called "Automatic Tithing", which allows Churches to allow their members to automatically donate using their credit card or debit card. This article may be republished as long as absolutely no changes are made, and the resource box is included. Copyright 2007 - Capital merchant Solutions, Inc. - All rights reserved.

- Todd Nelson

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In 1988, tax-deductible donations to US charities surpassed One Hundred billion for the first time in US history and church fundraising was a major percentage of that number. To put it in perspective, One Hundred billion is more than the profit revenue of all the Fortune 500 companies put together. And if charitable giving were used as a sales figure, charitable organizations would rank #2 in the Fortune 500 behind only General Motors and almost Twenty billion ahead of Exxon Mobil. It’s no exaggeration to say church fundraising is major business.

The chase for charitable donations has reached new levels in recent years, particularly in church fundraising. To offset a decline in federal funding during the 1980s and to maximize their share of philanthropic giving, the estimated 800,000 organizations that are categorized by the IRS as charities are increasingly hiring fundraising managers and charging them to raise increasingly larger totals of gift revenue.

Although no dependable statistics are available, it can be guessed that tens of thousands of men and women today carry out fundraising jobs as paid workers involved in church fundraising as well as activities for other non-profit organizations. One meter of this growth is that membership in the National Society of Fund Raising Executives has grown from fewer than 2,000 to more than than 10,000 in only 10 years.

The practitioners, whether they are involved in church fundraising or raising donations for another organization, conduct prospect searches to identify potential givers, accept credit card payments from contributors, coordinate special events to cultivate givers, solicit gifts by direct mail, phonathons, proposals, and face-to-face meetings; and write and edit publications to report fundraising results and to recognize givers.

To help them carry out these jobs, practitioners rely on church fundraising principles that have changed through anecdotal material and studies that have primarily been administrative in purpose. Collectively, these principles form a dominant perspective of the church fundraising function that focuses on how to generate money without questioning the rationale for the function of its effect on recipient organizations and society.

Although varying opinions may be offered in response, church fundraising research has made little progress in answering these questions. Without a theoretical base founded in the literature of academic disciplines, church fundraising traditionally has been ignored by educators as a subject worthy of scholarly study.

Part-time practitioner/scholars generally have provided research on church fundraising that has been rare. Even though there has been a dramatic increase of scholarly activity in the area of philanthropy, church fundraising as an organizational function has not been identified as one of the agreed upon problems that define that domain of study. This lack of scholarly interest in church fundraising is shown by the fact that only 3% of research projects on philanthropy and nonprofit organizations over the last 5 years have focused on church fundraising, but interest in this topic continues to increase.

This article was written by Todd Nelson, Marketing Director for Capital Merchant Solutions, Inc (HolyProcessing.com). CMS has been in the merchant account business for nearly 10 years, and offers free merchant accounts to both online and retail businesses. CMS also offers special programs for Churches and their members. One of these unique programs is called "Automatic Tithing", which allows Churches to allow their members to automatically donate using their credit card or debit card. This article may be republished as long as absolutely no changes are made, and the resource box is included. Copyright 2007 - Capital merchant Solutions, Inc. - All rights reserved.

- Todd Nelson

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