20 December 2022 “To be a conservationist is to be an eternal optimist. Pessimism serves no purpose, not when you are trying to change the world.” Jan Deblieu, Meant to Be Wild I think the same is true for fundraisers - that eternal optimism is a requirement; that pessimism...
29 November 2022 By David Allen, Development for Conservation Let’s get real. Strategic Planning isn’t hard. In fact, it’s pretty straightforward. You and I could bang out a serviceable Strategic Plan on a Friday afternoon and still make it to happy hour on time. But between now and...
8 November 2022 By David Allen, Development for Conservation When your blog title is "First Thing Tuesday," you always end up publishing on Election Day. And so it is today. And I work as a pollworker today, and I have neither the time nor the inclination to...
1 November 2022 By David Allen, Development for Conservation OK – so let’s talk about donor fatigue. And two things we need to acknowledge head-on. First, donor fatigue is real. It’s defined as the situation where donors either reduce or stop donating due to “feelings of indifference or...
25 October 2022 By David Allen, Development for Conservation (This essay was originally posted in October 2018. I have updated it for posting today. I still find it relevant with all the recent attention I have paid to Legacy Bequest Matching Campaigns.) Back in 2018, Jeff Brooks, Future...
27 September 2022 By David Allen, Development for Conservation Do fundraising goals and strategies belong in your organizational strategic plan? I think they do, but not in the way many people think. I’ve been looking at a lot of Strategic Plans lately – both those that I am involved...
13 September 2022 By David Allen, Development for Conservation I’m heading to Rally today, and it seemed timely to pull out this post from 2017 and update it. After all, it’s been a while, and we might be out of practice. If you are heading to New...
6 September 2022 By David Allen, Development for Conservation Every year in September, I start thinking about how just about every single member or donor who has given us money in recent memory will be solicited between now and year’s end. The entire year comes down to...
9 August 2022 By David Allen, Development for Conservation It’s primary election day in Wisconsin, and I am a pollworker, so I am reprising my set of fundraising letter “rules” from several years ago. The set is based on a book by Jeff Brooks that should probably...
2 August 2022 By David Allen, Development for Conservation This week I’m thinking about what someone might need to know to make a major gift. In this sense, I am staying with my soapbox premise that the word “major” should describe the decision to give and not...