14 March 2023 By David Allen, Development for Conservation Happy PI Day!! One of the complaints I hear fairly often is that we didn’t do as well as we had hoped because the mail didn’t go out on time. The appeal didn’t go out on time. The renewals...
6 December 2022 By David Allen, Development for Conservation So how are you feeling about 2022? Got your fundraising goals all knocked out? Feeling like the corner got turned from COVID back to some relative normalcy? Or maybe you’re still anxious about the end of the year. Somewhere in...
12 July 2022 By David Allen, Development for Conservation A couple of blinks from now, it will be August the 1st – where has the summer gone? As we cruise toward Labor Day, here’s what I’m thinking about for August. What are YOU thinking about? Getting Out of...
1 September 2020 By David Allen, Development for Conservation Numbers are just numbers. Five, 23, 478. Meaningless. We use numbers all the time, expecting them to convey importance. Four species, 42 acres, 55 years old, 300 members. But they don’t. Or at least they don’t convey any more importance than...
By David Allen, Development for Conservation My mother and her husband recently moved from Estes Park, Colorado to Portland, Oregon. In celebration and support, my wife and I bought her a membership in the Oregon State Parks Foundation, a day-use parking sticker for their car, and...
By David Allen, Development for Conservation If you accept the premise that fundraising through the mail, email, or phone is a science – a behavioral science – then you should be reading a blog called The Agitator. It is written by scientists about the science of...
By David Allen, Development for Conservation You know, right now, every member who will be renewing this year (assuming, of course, that you have members who renew every year). You know what they gave last year and when. And you know or could easily decide what...
The basic idea of the system I prefer is that you mail (using envelopes and postage) a sequence of four letters. The first three are one-page, straightforward renewal letters. They contain three important pieces of information: How long they have been a member, how much...
By David Allen, Development for Conservation I started last week’s post with a request. In preparation for a possible Rally presentation, I asked you about the value of your membership using one simple calculation: First, isolate the members and donors you have who made a first...
By David Allen, Development for Conservation Among the data points I get back from my website each week is the number of “page hits” I get from the top twenty or so most popular pages. The most popular page right now is a 2015 post of Writing...