11 April 2023 By David Allen, Development for Conservation Here’s a quick reminder about writing appeal letters: Nobody reads appeal letters. Writing for someone who will read it completely misses the point. People scan, skip, and skim. If they can’t get the message by scanning, skipping, and...
4 April 2023 By David Allen, Development for Conservation Just about every organization I am working with is dealing with the DEI question. Conservation is too white, too male, too educated, too elite. How can we get our boards to look more like our communities? For nearly...
28 March 2023 By David Allen, Development for Conservation Several years ago before COVID, I developed a Fundraising 101 workshop and presented it at one of the land trust conferences. It was intended for people who either are brand new to fundraising or just want to learn...
21 March 2023 By David Allen, Development for Conservation Quick – you’re off to meet with a donor and you can take one and only one prop with you. What do you take? Answer: A map. People love maps, and they love them because maps help place conservation projects...
14 March 2023 By David Allen, Development for Conservation Happy PI Day!! One of the complaints I hear fairly often is that we didn’t do as well as we had hoped because the mail didn’t go out on time. The appeal didn’t go out on time. The renewals...
7 March 2023 By David Allen, Development for Conservation Does your land trust have a Development Committee? A Board committee whose job it is to oversee organizational fundraising? What does it do? How is it organized? This post is about one way of thinking through these questions. I believe...
28 February 2023 By David Allen, Development for Conservation In the conservation community, and for land trusts in particular, the work is “in perpetuity” – forever. So, if our work will never end, neither can our organizations. They must be perpetual as well. And because none of...
21 February 2023 By David Allen, Development for Conservation Recently I attended a webinar presented by Tom Ahern. Ahern is a well-known figure in nonprofit direct response fundraising and has written several books related to communicating with donors: Turning Doubters Into Donors, How to Write Fundraising Materials...
14 February 2023 By David Allen, Development for Conservation Happy Valentine's Day! (Love your donors. They will love you back.) This post will have nothing to do with Valentine's Day. But I hope you have a lovely day, regardless! For the last several years, about this time, I...
7 February 2023 By David Allen, Development for Conservation Last week’s post – On Membership Levels and Data Retention – hit a chord with a lot of people. Great questions and what-ifs were posted in the comments and in my email both. So I promised a follow-up...