14 September 2021 By David Allen, Development for Conservation There was a moment in time when I thought writing appeals letters would be a substantial part of my consulting work. I felt like I was good at it, and my letters seemed to hold their own and...
7 September 2021 By David Allen, Development for Conservation Development for Conservation is on vacation this week and next, so I have repurposed a couple of posts that have gotten the most interest in recent years. This one was originally posted in August of 2017. It seems...
31 August 2021 By David Allen, Development for Conservation In 2019, I received an appeal letter from a client. The letter was two pages, 12 pt. type, black text on white paper, and illustrated with two attractive photographs. As a fundraising letter, it probably did well in...
3 August 2021 By David Allen, Development for Conservation A funny thing happened on my way to post First Thing Tuesday this week… I guess it was bound to happen eventually, but in 12 years, it hadn’t yet – until this week. I traveled all day on Sunday and...
20 July 2021 By David Allen, Development for Conservation Josh Spector is an entrepreneur’s entrepreneur who runs a company called Newsletters Creators. He recently published a set of practices that will help organizations get more out of their eNewsletters. The practices are taken from his course, Newsletter...
11 May 2021 By David Allen, Development for Conservation Last week, I wrote about the limited-term possibility that has suddenly loomed (or perhaps bloomed) in front of us. (See Pep Talk) Biden’s 30 by 30 plan People getting outside more. New levels of climate change awareness. More...
13 April 2021 By David Allen, Development for Conservation Dear Board Director: Does your organization have a Conflict-of-Interest Policy? Do you – specifically you – know what it says and how to use it? Could you provide evidence that it is being used? How about a Gift Acceptance Policy, an Investment...
16 March 2021 By David Allen, Development for Conservation I’m developing a new workshop this year on fundraising basics. I feel like one of the most important lessons of 2020 was that fundraising basics still matter. Organizations that had – and trusted – good fundamentals tended to...
23 February 2021 By David Allen, Development for Conservation I know several organizations looking to replace development staff who have moved on. Several others are considering hiring new development positions. And a couple are looking to hire their first fundraising staff. Seems like a good time to...
2 February 2021 By David Allen, Development for Conservation Before I start into today’s post, I want to remind you that I’m collecting five-year value information again, Time to Update the 5-Year Value Metric. If you could run a couple of reports on your database and send...