Plans and Budgets

07 Feb Stop Shooting Yourself in the Foot: Three Common Practices that Undermine Fundraising

Posted at 04:46h in Communication, Development Audit, Donor Cultivation, Featured, Membership, Plans and Budgets, Uncategorized 1 Comment

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....

24 Jan Denomination Rules: How much should we ask for?

Posted at 05:56h in Communication, Donor Cultivation, Featured, Plans and Budgets, Staff Development, Uncategorized 2 Comments

Donor by donor, each by each, consider and draft an interaction plan for each prospect. It’s tedious and time-consuming, and the more donors you begin to seriously cultivate, the more tedious the process becomes. I suggest taking two weeks out of each January and slogging...

10 Jan How Many Individuals Gave Money in 2016?

Posted at 05:45h in Development Audit, Featured, Membership, Plans and Budgets, Staff Development, Uncategorized 1 Comment

Here’s what I want to know: How many different individuals gave you money last year? It seems like such a simple question, but I have had more trouble getting clear answers than I ever would have suspected. How you count and what you count obviously...

03 Jan And that brings us ‘round to Do, oh, oh, oh……

Posted at 06:23h in Communication, Development Audit, Featured, Membership, Plans and Budgets, Staff Development, Uncategorized 0 Comments

Start again. January of another year. 2016 is over. History. Fa, sol, la, ti, Done. And January brings us ‘round again to Do. 2017 yawns before us. It could be anything. What will it be for you? January is a good time for reflection. Where have we been? How...

13 Dec Agents of Change

Posted at 05:55h in Board Development, Communication, Development Audit, Donor Cultivation, Featured, Plans and Budgets, Staff Development, Uncategorized 0 Comments

At Rally this year, I finally got to present the Development Committee Makeover workshop. The point of the workshop was to show, using before and after scripts, how Development Committees could address their work in a much more productive way by limiting their discussion to...

06 Dec The Importance of Recruiting First Renewals

Posted at 05:56h in Communication, Donor Cultivation, Featured, Membership, Plans and Budgets, Staff Development, Uncategorized 1 Comment

For this reason, the “conversion rate” from first givers to first renewals is one of the more important metrics you will want to pay attention to. It might even be the most significant metric related to membership growth. Several weeks ago, I offered strategies for...

22 Nov Development Planning from Scratch – Mind the Gap

Posted at 05:49h in Development Audit, Donor Cultivation, Featured, Plans and Budgets, Staff Development, Uncategorized 0 Comments

Back in August I started a series of posts about planning for development entitled“ Development Planning from Scratch.” With this morning’s post, I’ve come to the end of the thread. It assumes that you have started with a clear fundraising goal needed by the program,...

15 Nov Development Planning from Scratch – New Donors

Posted at 03:56h in Development Audit, Donor Cultivation, Featured, Membership, Plans and Budgets, Staff Development, Uncategorized 1 Comment

Every year, about 1/4 of your members are brand new and nearly 1/2 are in their first 3 years of membership. If you want your membership to grow, you need to attract more new members than you're losing every year....

08 Nov Development Planning from Scratch – Current Donors

Posted at 02:16h in Communication, Donor Cultivation, Featured, Membership, Plans and Budgets, Staff Development, Uncategorized 1 Comment

If I was planning a membership program from scratch, I would start with a membership drive in the Spring months and an end-of-the-year appeal letter in the Fall. Everyone would get at least two letters – one asking them to renew their membership and one...

01 Nov Are you Ready for Some Turkey?

Posted at 05:15h in Communication, Development Audit, Donor Cultivation, Featured, Plans and Budgets, Staff Development, Uncategorized 0 Comments

Are you ready for November? Are you getting the most out of the magic three months when 50-70% of all your gifts for the year will be committed? Here’s what I’m thinking about. What are YOU thinking about?...