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...
15 January 2021 By David Allen, Development for Conservation The unwelcome news arrived in an email on Tuesday afternoon: Joselin Matkins, an accomplished land trust Executive Director from Idaho, took her own life on Friday, January 8th. She was 42 years old. Land trust director found deceased I had to...
22 December 2020 Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop away from you like the leaves...