18 April 2023 By David Allen, Development for Conservation A few years ago, a Board member complained to me that the land trust wasn’t growing. “We have the same 250 donors we had ten years ago,” he said. I thought that was unlikely. This Board member was concerned about...
28 March 2023 By David Allen, Development for Conservation Several years ago before COVID, I developed a Fundraising 101 workshop and presented it at one of the land trust conferences. It was intended for people who either are brand new to fundraising or just want to learn...
24 January 2023 By David Allen, Development for Conservation There’s a fun story about three bricklayers who are asked what they are doing. (You've probably heard it.) The first describes laying each brick on top of the others so that the lines are straight in every direction....
3 January 2023 By David Allen, Development for Conservation Happy New Year! Time to start again. January of another year. 2022 is over. Fa, sol, la, ti, Done. And that brings us ‘round again “to Do.” 2023 yawns before us. It could be anything. It definitely will be something. What will...
7 June 2022 By David Allen, Development for Conservation (Most of this post was originally published in June of 2017.) Imagine a day when someone walks in the door of your land trust and offers to pay for everything you need to accomplish your mission. Not an invitation...
24 May 2022 By David Allen, Development for Conservation Last week, I promised you a blog about strategies for recruiting new donors. I’m still going to post that, but I’m putting it off a week. Because the stock market is down 20%. And I’m sensing a level of concern...
11 January 2022 Last week I wrote about planning individual solicitations for your Board members and a selection of 30 or so donors: How to Make a Donor Plan. I suggested starting with a list of everyone who gave money in 2020 before pulling your Board members...
4 January 2022 There’s something you can do this week that will make a HUGE difference in how much money you will raise this year. It may take several hours to do it right, or maybe even a couple of days. And you probably won’t enjoy doing...
12 October 2021 By David Allen, Development for Conservation Note: Most of this post was originally published in 2015. One July, my board chair came to me with a request that I “forecast” where we would end up on December 31st in each of our revenue targets. He...
8 June 2021 By David Allen, Development for Conservation It’s June! Welcome to summer! From a fundraising point of view, think about this: You will ask just about everyone currently giving money to make another gift between now and 12/31. How much will you ask them for? I get asked...