5 March 2024 By David Allen, Development for Conservation One of the more common entry points for me when working with new organizations is a Development Audit (or Assessment). The audit looks critically at everything an organization is doing to raise money. One of the standard features of...
27 February 2024 By David Allen, Development for Conservation I once worked with an organization that had more board committees than board members. Just related to fundraising and communications, the organization had a Development Committee, a Corporate Relations Committee, a Fundraising Committee, a Membership Committee, a Newsletter...
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...
14 June 2022 By David Allen, Development for Conservation Two core fundraising ideas come together in this post. The first is that we raise money from people who already give us money. Marketing efforts to bring in new people frequently cost more money than they raise. The second...
3 May 2022 By David Allen, Development for Conservation Note: Most of this post was originally published in 2017. My workshop was about major gift fundraising (of course), and I had come to the part where Board members need to give themselves first. How can we ask...
19 April 2022 By David Allen, Development for Conservation For the last couple of weeks, I’ve been writing about communicating with donors. We’re Outreaching; Are We Succeeding? Communicating with “People Who Give Money” Four Common Communications Failures I See Too Frequently And as I explained last week, communication has been on...
22 March 2022 By David Allen, Development for Conservation Somebody out there is going to laugh at this, but I just heard about Kaye Sprinkel Grace’s “AAA” Board a few weeks ago. And fell in love with it. Every Board I’ve ever met has been populated by a majority...
1 February 2022 By David Allen, Development for Conservation A: A donor continues to give when the event is cancelled. I’m noticing a number of Board members recently who have seriously curbed their giving in 2020 and 2021 or who have stopped giving at all. When I’ve asked...
14 December 2021 By David Allen, Development for Conservation Tomorrow is the 15th of December. Which means that today is the day for an annual reminder that all fundraisers should be available all week this week for the people you serve. Hopefully, this is all review! Sorry about...
10 August 2021 By David Allen, Development for Conservation If you are a Board member of a land trust or any other nonprofit, this post is directed at you. If you are on staff, please send it to your Board members. In my workshops and seminars and even...