AFP

In a webinar last month titled "Positioning for Wealth Transfer," Campbell & Company Vice President Bruce Matthews talked about the need for organizations to prepare programs that take full advantage of this boon.

The Association for Healthcare Philanthropy (AHP) today issued the following statement regarding limits on tax deductions for charitable donations proposed in the Obama Administration's budget.

You’ve almost certainly had the meeting. You know, the one about how to survive the crunch, the crisis, the catastrophe — or whatever you want to call it. The meeting where you probably were uncertain about what to do and even about what the impact might be on your organization. Maybe the only thing everyone agreed on was that it’s a difficult situation in fundraising at the moment with few clear answers on how to survive.

AFP member, experienced fundraiser, speaker and author, Gail Perry, CFRE, shares with eWire readers her thoughts on how to keep going productively in these bad economic times. She believes that without a positive outlook we cannot go forward to make the world a better place. Below is her "positive thinking" list for '09.

2008 was an amazing roller-coaster of a year on so many levels, filled with soaring highs and abysmal lows. A couple of the highlights: The Phillies won the World Series — hey, we’re in Philadelphia; it was a big deal (but whether it made the Eagles’ smashed Super Bowl dreams any less painful is debatable); and, oh yeah, history was made in the political arena when the American people gave Barack Obama the presidency.

News From the Bridge Conference, Oct. 6 (Washington, D.C.) Plans are now under way for the fourth annual Bridge Conference, and the educational teams are starting now to recruit speakers and panels. The conference will once again be co-hosted by the Direct Marketing Association of Washington and the Washington D.C. Metro Area Chapter of the Association of Fundraising Professionals, and sessions will support the educational missions unique to and shared by each group. Dynamic presenters wanted! If you’re willing to share your expertise next summer as a speaker or panelist, please let the conference planners know. We’re interested in lectures or panels that

News From the Bridge Conference, Oct. 6 (Washington, D.C.) Plans are now under way for the fourth annual Bridge Conference, and the educational teams are starting now to recruit speakers and panels. The conference will once again be co-hosted by the Direct Marketing Association of Washington and the Washington D.C. Metro Area Chapter of the Association of Fundraising Professionals, and sessions will support the educational missions unique to and shared by each group. Dynamic presenters wanted! If you’re willing to share your expertise next summer as a speaker or panelist, please let the conference planners know. We’re interested in lectures or panels that

If you’re a nonprofit fundraiser in South Jersey, you’ll be happy to know that you’ll soon be getting your very own chapter of the AFP. Interested professionals can attend the Exploratory Membership Meeting of the new Southern New Jersey Chapter of the Association of Fundraising Professionals at 3 p.m. on June 6 at the Noyes Museum of Art, 733 Lily Lake Rd., in Oceanville, NJ. But you have to RSVP by June 4. (That’s tomorrow, folks!) The meeting will include information on the AFP, the new chapter and how current AFP members can transfer their existing memberships to the new chapter. For additional information,

There’s a lot to be said about failure. Mainly that it stinks. No, seriously — failure helps you appreciate success a little more, right? And on a less existential level, it can teach you a lot about what not to do next time around. That’s no more apparent than in the world of direct-mail fundraising efforts. And from what we hear, it happens to the best of them. So to prove you’re not alone when one of your ideas isn’t as all-fire successful as you had hoped, here are a few failure stories from fundraising pros. Hear Ye, Hear Ye … Don’t Traumatize Your

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