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...
Can you motivate your $250 and $500 members to give $1,000? Can you motivate your $1,000 members to give $1,200 ($100/month) or even $2,500 to $5,000? $10,000? Every individual success you have in this area is a huge win for the operating budget. But more...
Writing and editing fundraising letters is better thought of as an exercise in technical writing, than as writing actual letters. There are techniques, rules, and form to the exercise that, if followed closely, will help you raise more money. Many of these techniques are counter-intuitive....
Renewal letters need to do three things: They need to remind me of WHY I’m a member. They need to remind me of what I gave last year. And they need to suggest an increased level of support this year. And they need to do...
Most of us are familiar with the basics of a gift chart – a list of gifts needed to make a specific goal with higher-level gifts listed first and smaller gifts listed below in descending tiers, sometimes called a donor pyramid. Gift charts are commonly...
Premiums are different than benefits. Premiums are offered to incentivize a particular action or activity – like upgrading to a $100 membership, for example. They are only given the first time someone does something. Benefits are things that accrue to members at certain levels –...
Membership is not a “fee” or a “cost” and therefore can’t be “discounted” by definition. Think of it like a birthday gift to a close relative. You would be completely confused if they told that they were giving you a “deal” this year by allowing...
• You should NOT help the donor establish value by including an estimated value in the acknowledgement letter. I don’t even recommend that you enter estimated values with in-kind gifts in your donor software programs. The value of a donated asset is used by the donor...
In a perfect world, non-profits would enjoy consistent and stable community support. Individual donors might make a first gift, a second gift (first renewal), multiple unrestricted gifts on some sort of predictable schedule, episodic major gifts restricted to support specific programs or projects, and a...
This weeks’ post is about shooting yourself in the foot. And in each case, the cause is related to an overreaction to a complaint. Worse, sometimes the person complaining is someone internal to the organization and who therefore should know better....