AHA Moments from the 2011 Land Trust Alliance Rally

22 Nov AHA Moments from the 2011 Land Trust Alliance Rally

David,

I thoroughly enjoyed your seminar at the recent Rally and wanted to share with you an “AHA” moment that I have had since returning from Milwaukee. Using our database, which serves as the basis of our fundraising program recordkeeping, I identified our top 150 donors and created a three ring binder with printouts of the basic record information for each donor – name/address/record of donations. This is now prominently on my desk as a reminder of where my executive director and I need to focus our efforts. I make notes on each sheet as I am in contact with the donor in some way and will continue to evaluate our progress with at least four contacts per year as you recommended.

Then after struggling to decide how we were going to get a new series of films we shot this summer “out there” beyond our website, I had an AHA moment. We could duplicate DVD’s with the same graphics and images from the website onto the DVD and send a DVD with a “thank you for loyalty and support” note enclosure to each one of the 150 donors and all of our board members not included in that list. This mailing went out last week in advance of our end of the year appeal letter, which goes out next week right before Thanksgiving. Already we have gotten lots of positive feedback and I’ve had board members ask for additional DVD’s to give out to potential donors they want to contact. Just what hoped for! At our board meeting next week I’ll have plenty of additional DVD duplicates and mailers for board members to take with them as well.

Thanks again for a meaningful workshop and much food for thought.

Thanks to “Linda” for sharing her AHA moment from Rally. Do you have an AHA moment that might inspire others? Write it up and send it to me for inclusion in a future First Thing Tuesday post.

Happy Thanksgiving!

-da