Charity A’s letters remind them of what they gave last year and ask them to give a little more this year, even specifying a target amount. How does the land trust’s renewal and appeal letters compare? And how much is each organization receiving from them...
22 October 2024 By David Allen, Development for Conservation If we could change our collective thinking in just one way, we would all raise more money – and not by just a little bit. That shift in thinking goes like this: Donors give because they want to. It sounds simple...
24 September 2024 By David Allen, Development for Conservation Note: It's Rally Week - [Will I see you in Providence?] - and I am reposting this from March of 2022. If there is one word in land trust language that would benefit the most from tighter definition, it’s...
9 April 2024 By David Allen, Development for Conservation Last year in December, I wrote a blog post about how land trusts might be able to get younger. The post seemed to resonate and was even picked up in the most recent issue of the Alliance’s Saving...
6 February 2024 By David Allen, Development for Conservation Some ten years ago or so, the keynote speaker for Rally was Andy Goodman and his topic was story-telling. His basic message was that we all need to be in the group of people who communicate all the...
22 August 2023 By David Allen, Development for Conservation I was amused recently by another Vu Le blog post. It was written in response to an article in the Chronicle of Philanthropy (Why I Stopped Donating to Your Organization), written from the perspective of a donor, in...
11 July 2023 By David Allen, Development for Conservation Step outside of your organizational role and pretend, for a moment, that you are a donor. You care about the land trust and you care about the mission of conservation. You also care about other things – like...
10 January 2023 By David Allen, Development for Conservation If you graduated from 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...
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...