This BLOG is intended to help conservation organizations and land trusts pursue excellence in all aspects of their conservation endeavors. I welcome your comments and feedback to these posts.
By David Allen, Development for Conservation One feature of the blog world that I have found academically interesting over the years is the “hits per page.” This is the metric that tells the writer which pages or posts attract the most readers, whether it’s because they...
By David Allen, Development for Conservation I have this image I like a lot. It’s an image of a campfire somewhere on a moonless night. The fire creates light which illuminates everything that is relatively close. It also warms everything relatively close to it. But if you get...
By David Allen, Development for Conservation Earlier this year, I posted the results from my annual survey of conservation organizations and their 5-Year Value of Membership. At that point in time, I had data from twenty different organizations, and the median value was $1,100. This means...
By David Allen, Development for Conservation I’m working with several groups right now who are interested in changing their Board’s culture. Specifically, they have Boards who have not been particularly involved in raising money and are interested in encouraging and supporting Board level efforts in this...
By David Allen, Development for Conservation Hi! Yeah (Mark, Sue, James, Samantha) said you might be looking for a (treasurer, attorney, Millennial, Timbuktu resident) for your Board. I’m your man! Yeah (he’s, she’s) a great person. And s/he says you are a great organization, too. Of course I’ve...
By David Allen, Development for Conservation You know, right now, every member who will be renewing this year (assuming, of course, that you have members who renew every year). You know what they gave last year and when. And you know or could easily decide what...
By David Allen, Development for Conservation Last week, I spent a perfectly wonderful two days at the Texas Land Trust Council’s Land Conservation Conference. Wonderful that is until I went outside the hotel expecting 80 degrees and sun and got 39 degrees and rain instead. I...
By David Allen, Development for Conservation Three weeks ago, I asked you for data related to the value of your donors: Isolate the members and donors you have who made a first gift to your organization at some point – any point – during the calendar...
By David Allen, Development for Conservation I’m going to delay another week reporting back to you on the 5-year-value data I’m collecting in hopes of getting information back from a couple more land trusts who participated last year. The results are interesting thus far, but I...
By David Allen, Development for Conservation Before I get into this week’s topic, let me quickly remind you that I am gathering 5-year-value data on new members again this year. I will report on what I learn in the next few weeks. If you are willing...