By David Allen, Development for Conservation I have this image I like a lot. It’s an image of a campfire somewhere on a moonless night. The fire creates light which illuminates everything that is relatively close. It also warms everything relatively close to it. But if you get...
By David Allen, Development for Conservation I’m going to delay another week reporting back to you on the 5-year-value data I’m collecting in hopes of getting information back from a couple more land trusts who participated last year. The results are interesting thus far, but I...
By David Allen, Development for Conservation Last year at Thanksgiving, I wrote about the differences between gratitude and gratefulness. (See Gratitude and Gratefulness) The word grateful is not necessarily focused on a source. We are grateful for stuff – health, material gifts, sunshine, rest – that is...
By David Allen, Development for Conservation I have spent quite a bit of time recently pounding on the We-Need-To-Be-More-Scientific-In-Our-Fundraising drum. That was a primary message in the Rally workshop on Fundraising Metrics, and I’ve written about it often on this blog. Here’s a concrete example related to...
by David Allen, Development for Conservation Dear Mary, We opened the Trillium Trail today. In the grand scheme of things, it was a little thing. There were about 30 people there, mostly the volunteers who worked on building it these last three years. Frank was there,...
.....the cycle of solicitation, gift, and newsletter should all work together. How can that happen if they are each written for different audiences? It makes all the sense in the world that you would want to write your newsletters with the same rules that you...
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 and intuitive,...
There is a real person behind every gift – most of whom are giving from their hearts, motivated by an interest in supporting the work and commitment we have to our organizational mission. Their gifts are freely bestowed and not necessarily earned or even deserved....
The trend in all communications is toward the use of very personal stories and testimonials. This trend – first person accounts of real people, their motivations, and emotional connections to the land – also makes for effective fundraising. Testimonials, once captured, can be used (with...
"Major gift" is donor-centric and describes how the decision gets made. It is independent of the denomination of the gift. One donor’s $5,000 is an annual gift; the decision is made to some degree because of the donor’s giving history. For another donor, the same...