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...
12 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” It’s been on my mind because I’ve been doing a whole series of Development Audits – comprehensive...
5 April 2022 By David Allen, Development for Conservation In a by-the-book communications plan, you would define a small set of audiences with whom you want to communicate, identify the medium or media to which they are known to respond, identify the messages you wish to get...
8 March 2022 By David Allen, Development for Conservation [The bulk of this post originally appeared in March of 2016] Recently, I conducted a training session with a land trust. I had to fly to get there, so whereas I brought a projector, handouts, and so on, I...
23 November 2020 By David Allen, Development for Conservation Last year’s post from Thanksgiving week referenced Larry Smith’s Op-Ed from the NY Times asking readers to use the six-word form to make sense of 2020. The six-word story form idea was reportedly born at Mr. Smith’s Thanksgiving...
16 November 2021 By David Allen, Development for Conservation In Wisconsin, one of the coveted event venues is the Governor’s mansion. Non-profits from all over the state, but especially from Madison, compete for open calendar slots. And more than one organization has had their event pulled in...
17 August 2021 By David Allen, Development for Conservation Consider the following two paragraphs: The Conservancy celebrated the opening of its 9th nature preserve on Saturday with a brief ceremony and ribbon-cutting. At 264 acres, the Sykes Ridge Preserve is now the Conservancy’s largest preserve. It is home...
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...
27 July 2021 By David Allen, Development for Conservation We are environmental organizations! We need to STOP sending so much stuff to our donors. They feel overwhelmed! Especially in the mail. Think about this: the average American household receives 2,000 pieces of “junk” mail every year! If we...
9 March 2021 By David Allen, Development for Conservation Several years ago, Vu Le (Non-Profit AF) wrote a critique of donor-centric fundraising. In the several weeks that followed, I wrote a critique of his critique, arguing that Le’s definition of donor-centric fundraising was based on several inaccuracies....