2 June 2026 By David Allen, Development for Conservation The following is a post I published in 2018. I have reposted variations on this theme every year since. This week, I am out fishing in eastern Oregon, so it seems timely to republish the original. In 2017,...
The traditional solution is direct mail. Lots of folks believe direct mail is dead. The truth is that it’s less and less effective while still being head and shoulders better than anything else. Maybe twenty or thirty years ago, a “decent” direct mail return was...
We are part of a community of people – thousands strong – who are productively engaged in permanently protecting conservation land across the country – even across the world. Beating back the FODs (Forces of Darkness). And there are little wins everywhere. And in some...
Equivalency language should be legitimate, and that means it probably shouldn’t be used for levels of membership. Assigning equivalency to an ask string of $35, $100, $250, $500 and Other will ALWAYS be forced and gimmicky, and it will come across that way. ...
No one gives us extra credit for NOT asking. We are all deluged every day by nonprofit requests in the mail, in email, and on social media. How many of those requests were from our organization? Four? Ten? It doesn’t matter. The point is the...
If statements like these represent the WHY of what we’re doing, and we attract people who believe what we believe by leading with the WHY, how are we using our organizational guiding principles to discover new supporters?...
We could be raising a lot more, but we’re focused on small-ball fundraising. We fail to put big visions on the table – visions that might attract big money. We focus on raising money through digital marketing instead of building long-term relationships with individual donors....
Literally – print out the draft letter and use a highlighter to mark every use of these pronouns. Notice the frequency – the weight – of their use. And then go back through, and in each case, ask yourself whether the pronoun explicitly includes the...
Typed communication is rarely read linearly. Recipients read the first line, then skip to the PS Note, scanning the paragraphs in between for things that catch their eye. Handwritten letters are read from start to finish, allowing you as the writer to lay out your...
31 March 2026 By David Allen, Development for Conservation When your land trust lists its conservation partners, what does that list look like? Does it include State agencies? Federal agencies? Local government agencies? Tribes? The Nature Conservancy? Other conservation nonprofits? All of the above? My guess is that the list...