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....
By David Allen, Development for Conservation Happy New Year! Time to start again. January of another year. 2020 is over. (Thank Goodness!) Probably wasn’t what you thought it was going to be last year at this time. (There’s an understatement!) But now, it’s finally over. History. Fa, sol, la, ti,...
27 October 2020 By David Allen, Development for Conservation Last week, I ended my post with the words: We are the ones we have been waiting for. They weren’t original. They are from a poem that had been passed to me through enough hands that I needed further research...
20 October 2020 By David Allen, Development for Conservation As a fundraiser, I can honestly say that the future has never seemed more uncertain than it is right now. In many ways, it feels like we are teetering on the edge of something truly horrible (great depression?,...
11 August 2020 By David Allen, Development for Conservation It’s Election Day in Wisconsin – the Partisan Primary. We’ll be voting for our party’s candidates for everything from Congressional Representative to State Senator to County Clerk of Deeds. So, I’m off early to work the polls. So, I’ll need...
By David Allen, Development for Conservation Aldo Leopold, the famed author of A Sand County Almanac, is revered today almost as much for the quality of his writing as for its content. He was an early riser and often wrote in his journal in the wee...
Writing and editing fundraising letters is better thought of as an exercise in technical writing, than as writing actual letters. There are techniques, rules, and form to the exercise that, if followed closely, will help you raise more money. Many of these techniques are counter-intuitive....
By David Allen, Development for Conservation If you graduated from a college, you know that the Alumni Association from your alma mater started calling you and writing you about ten minutes later. And in return for your annual gift, you get a copy of the Alumni...
By David Allen, Development for Conservation One feature of the blog world that I have found academically interesting over the years is the “hits per page.” This is the metric that tells the writer which pages or posts attract the most readers, whether it’s because they...