From now until Christmas, everything you do with members and donors should be coordinated. And everything they see should appear coordinated as well....
Getting the most out of your fall fundraising events - you want to capture as much information from the evening as possible. And to set it all up, you need to get organized now...
This year write your fundraising letters to your most important donors longhand. Actually make this a board activity with each board member writing 3-5 letters....
Replace your ability to narrate in the third person with an ability to testify in the first person. So with that in mind, I suggest that you join the organization you support....
I have yet to meet a land trust that felt it had enough members. On the one hand, it’s both difficult to argue with and hardly surprising. On the other hand, recruiting new members can become an obsession that results in serious neglect of the...
The Town of Bolton, Connecticut has 1,998 residential addresses. The Bolton Land Trust has just fewer than 300 members. That’s a 15% penetration rate, or about 1 member for every 7 addresses. How do they do it? …..mailing to every household in Bolton several times...
In fundraising for land conservation, we often say that “the land sells itself.” By this we simply mean that if you can get a potential donor out on the land to see, smell, touch – feel – for themselves, often that’s all you need. This...
That scenario presumes, of course, that you do not have a mailhouse doing all the work for you. If you do have a mailhouse that you work with, what you can do now is get the merge files ready to go. But you should also...
Back in May, I talked about periodically using some reflective time to “take stock” of where you are right now versus where you thought you’d be at this time (See Taking Stock). Presumably, if you acted on the advice, you a) redoubled your effort to...
Foundation grants should be written by the person closest to the project - the project manager or land steward. Board members have a role to play here as well, because (hopefully!) they are well connected in the community and know key decision-makers. Now – in...