9 December 2025 By David Allen, Development for Conservation I would say that a fundraiser with enough experience to matter will take several months to learn their way around, a year or so to learn the donor base, and another year or even two to build the...
4 June 2024 By David Allen, Development for Conservation There’s a spot in Nebraska on the Platte River where a large percentage of the continent's sandhill cranes gather (stopover) every March on their migratory way from the Gulf of Mexico to their northern breeding grounds. If you...
16 May 2023 By David Allen, Development for Conservation There’s a spot in Nebraska on top of a little rise where you can see grass all the way to the horizon in every direction. What you can’t see is any sign of human life. No roads. No...
9 May 2023 By David Allen, Development for Conservation It’s conference season in land trust world, and I have been thrilled at being back in person! After several years of trying to do conferences over ZOOM, I am grateful that we are back in 3D. In one of...
13 December 2022 By David Allen, Development for Conservation I subscribe to a couple of essay aggregators in addition to four or five blogs and three newspapers. More than I can possibly keep up with. So, most of the time, I find myself skimming the headlines more...
30 August 2022 By David Allen, Development for Conservation One of the more frustrating parts of a fundraiser’s job happens when people don’t actually do what they said they would do. OK – any job. Donors promise a reply by Tuesday and Friday rolls around without a word. ...
19 July 2022 By David Allen, Development for Conservation It’s a common lament. All-volunteer organizations looking to hire their first staff position. Much larger organizations feeling everything would balance out if they just had that administrative position, or another land steward, or a Fundraising Manager, or … Well...
10 May 2022 By David Allen, Development for Conservation There’s a spot in Nebraska on top of a little rise where you can see grass all the way to the horizon in every direction. What you can’t see is any sign of human life. No roads. No...
15 March 2022 By David Allen, Development for Conservation Don’t know whether you’re paying attention, but there is a TON of churn in the conservation community right now. Executive Directors, having come into land trust positions as a wave in the 1990s and early 2000s are now...
19 October 2021 By David Allen, Development for Conservation In an ideal world, an organization would hire development staff in the Fall – in October or November. This is true regardless of whether the staff person was a new member of an existing team or whether it...