Fundraiser Education

It's a lot of fun these days to figure out the best way to use some or all of these great new tools, but it's still a balancing act to figure out which ones will give us the best overall return on investment.

Go into each meeting prepared with a formal or informal agenda, a sense of timing and desired outcomes.

When people won’t fundraise because they’re scared, remind them to consider the alternative. If it were them being faced personally with this problem, how might that change their feelings? We don’t raise money simply for the love of money. We do so to restore balance to a world that constantly gets out of whack. If we don’t do it, who will? Here are seven ways to set your fundraisers up to overcome the "scary."

Dear Fundraiser, some things you do really bug me. As your colleague, I’m cheering for your success. So in a helpful spirit, I offer you my list below.

I wish you wouldn’t: send me an automated thank you message for an online gift and assume that’s enough, forget to thank me at all, send me a buck slip receipt and a generic postcard instead of a real letter …

I have never read one article about what families of development professionals experience. Their love, sacrifice and dedication are amazing.

To ensure a successful fundraising effort, organizations have to focus on and structure the campaign process in the following ways so the needed funds are raised and the process simultaneously strengthens the organization. 1. The need has to be clearly identified and should relate to a specific segment of the community. 2. The solicitor who is passionate about the need for which he or she is raising funds can best make that need come alive …

"It's a tight market for employers, and our survey tells us that only 33 percent of employers offer a formal training program for new hires," says Greg Albright, founder and chief communications officer at Production Solutions and PS Digital.

Every charity is an underdog and has giants to overcome. Even the biggest charity brands are themselves underdogs in the face of cancer or social injustice, etc. So anyone who works for a charity, and especially anyone who is determined to succeed in fundraising, should benefit from reading the fascinating new book by Malcolm Gladwell, "David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits and the Art of Battling Giants."

Could you be a speaker at next year's International Fundraising Congress? Time to start thinking about it.

Michelle, one of the regular readers of Today in Fundraising, recently asked me some questions that have been great thought-provokers for me.