Generous givers inspire me! This past weekend, I had the privilege of attending the fraternity convention of Phi Kappa Theta. I have the honor of serving as chairman of the fraternity’s foundation and was interacting with many generous donors over the weekend...
A cursory search on the Internet for “volunteer handbooks” produces disappointing results. Most examples are no more than a couple of pages stapled together, highlighting dress codes, attendance policies and general volunteering expectations...
America’s love affair with peer-to-peer fundraising events is well documented. Every year, thousands of organizations sponsor “a-thon events”—such as walks, runs and rides—in which their supporters act as their fundraisers...
If your job is in peer-to peer fundraising, you are in the movement business. Movements require numbers—big ones. Mainstream fundraisers often look at P2P fundraising with suspicion veiled in skepticism. It looks a little bit like magic, too much like an art and certainly not a science. It looks like messy work, too, with big numbers of humans all attached to small donations...
Podcasts are a great way to hear from the nonprofit industry influencers personally and glean some of their information from their numerous years in the industry. Many of them have insightful advice into the inner workings of nonprofits and how to do better at what they do everyday. But just as you’re making the world a better place, sometimes you need to make your world a better place...
Over the past 20 years, I have had my share of jobs and have started some fundraising offices within nonprofits as part of my consulting practice. As a result, I have gotten pretty good at figuring out the first steps when setting up your development office...
We’ve been working with major gift officers for quite a long time. I think Richard and I, along with our associates, have seen just about every type of personality, work ethic and passion, or lack of, in the MGOs we have managed...
While online giving is growing, it’s our assumption that donors are comfortable filling out their personal information into an online donation form and hitting the submit button. Then, where does that information go? For donors, that can be unnerving...
Every fundraising program has them: financial objectives, which are set and tracked internal to the organization. We also have fundraising goals, which we communicate to our constituents. I’ll call those “external” goals...
As a strategic planning practitioner, I love the process and the outcomes, but I am saddened when a well-conceived plan just sits on the shelf. From a fundraising perspective, a strategic planning process that engages key constituencies and great minds is a wonderful cultivation opportunity, and the resulting plan should give confidence to donors who might invest in making the plans a reality...
