27 December 2022 By David Allen, Development for Conservation A good friend was asked recently to prepare a few remarks for his church on the subject of Hope. As I had just completed my annual Holiday messages with a theme of Optimism, it started me thinking about...
18 October 2022 By David Allen, Development for Conservation I’m one of those people who likes strategic planning. It exercises two parts of my brain that I seem to have some aptitude for: convergent thinking (analysis and interpretation) and divergent thinking (brainstorming). An early exercise in strategic planning...
23 August 2022 By David Allen, Development for Conservation I was recently forwarded a blog post from Cross & Crown, a digital marketing firm based in Pennsylvania whose tagline says they “strive to help educate, advocate, and thrive in a digital world.” The post, Conservation Land Trust...
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...