Earlier this week, I was talking with a client about their newsletter. It’s mailed to their monthly donors as a cultivation piece, with wonderful stories about how their gift has made a difference. It also goes to their active and major donors...
Several years ago, I left a hospital position in another state to come back “home” to Indiana. I decided, at the encouragement of a colleague, to create my own consulting firm, which I still have today. My first assignment with this firm was to take on a six-month assignment as an interim executive director of a dying nonprofit...
Donors are a major part of any nonprofit’s efforts—they are the ones funding your mission after all! It only makes sense, then, that smart nonprofits would have a strategy in place for managing all of the data that comes along with donor relationships. Luckily, donor database software (also known as nonprofit constituent relationship management or…
For nonprofits, apologizing is effective when it addresses two quite different situations. First, admit the mistakes you make in your programs; the social service program that delivered mediocre outcomes; the performing arts performance that bombed...
My work has taken me from the Florida Keys to Washington’s Olympic Peninsula and without fail, no matter which community I visit, I will at some point hear nonprofit funders comment, “Oh no, we don’t do capacity building. It’s just not a part of our focus.”...
If you’re an experienced fundraiser, you’ve been taught that in-person, face-to-face solicitation is the most effective way to solicit gifts. But is it?...
We all talk about the need for relationship in major gifts. And we all know that relationship is the key to success—servicing the desires and dreams of the donor in an ethical, sincere and caring way is what will cause a generous financial response...
If you have a small number of monthly donors, you always want to be moving toward growing that number: to the next 50, to the next 100 or, perhaps, to the next 1,000, but moving you must. I’m also a strong believer of writing down your “moving” goal and developing a plan to get there. There’s something truly magical about writing down goals because you will indeed get there...
I was recently asked to make a presentation at a hospital foundation’s board of directors meeting. The foundation executive director wanted me to speak on how to engage his board members in fundraising. I truly enjoy teaching and speaking to groups, so I was prepared. The secondary benefit for me in meeting with this group was to watch the executive director interact with his board chair and board members and see how the meeting was directed...
Recently, we met with a major health care nonprofit that was reviewing its fundraising portfolio. Their peer-to-peer campaign had become an unholy mix of walks and runs, often holding runs and walks on the same day, mixing constituents who showed great affinity to their cause with others who showed great affinity to running 5K races...
