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...
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 think about...
15 September 2020 By David Allen, Development for Conservation First of all this week, let’s all take a moment to consider the members of our land trust community who are suffering due to the fires in the west. I have received several heartbreaking emails and messages from...
25 August 2020 By David Allen, Development for Conservation I think we make a mistake when we focus our attention, and that of our donors, on the purchase price. For what it’s worth, it’s probably based on a misguided sense that we need to show ourselves to be...
4 August 2020 By David Allen, Development for Conservation A few years ago in mid-November, a client asked me whether they could just use the same appeal letter they used last year. That appeal letter had done reasonably well and had surpassed the fundraising results from previous...