Communication

  16 April 2024   By David Allen, Development for Conservation   In my practice, I have come to make several nomenclature distinctions. These are oversimplified, to be sure, but they serve to help ensure my clients and I are talking about the same things when we use the same...

  2 April 2024   By David Allen, Development for Conservation   In a perfect world we would know – really know – every single donor who gives money. We would know how they found the land trust in the first place. We would know how old they are and...

  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...

  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...