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.
1 December 2020 By David Allen, Development for Conservation Just about everyone I know is sending out an appeal letter this week or next. You too? It’s that time of year. This has already been a surprisingly good year for fundraising, and we are pinning hopes of keeping it...
24 November 2020 By David Allen, Development for Conservation Magazine editor Larry Smith has been collecting people’s six-word stories about their lives since 2006. Reportedly, the idea was born at a Thanksgiving dinner with friends and family and was based on an anecdote attributed to Ernest Hemingway:...
17 November 2020 By David Allen, Development for Conservation Cold water time. Ready? Nobody cares about your birthday more than you do. (Not even your mother.) In fact, for the vast majority of people you have met during the years since your actual birth day, your annual celebration doesn’t...
10 November 2020 By David Allen, Development for Conservation OK – Election is over – time to return our attention to fundraising. Think back to the last time you spent (or at least committed) a great deal of money on something you really wanted. A car for example. And...
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...
27 October 2020 By David Allen, Development for Conservation Last week, I ended my post with the words: We are the ones we have been waiting for. They weren’t original. They are from a poem that had been passed to me through enough hands that I needed further research...
20 October 2020 By David Allen, Development for Conservation As a fundraiser, I can honestly say that the future has never seemed more uncertain than it is right now. In many ways, it feels like we are teetering on the edge of something truly horrible (great depression?,...
13 October 2020 By David Allen, Development for Conservation Rally week has now come and gone. It was my 15th Rally, not that it’s important, but the 2020 version was certainly different from the other 14! Nearly 4,000 people registered. Holy cow! The workshop I led had nearly...
6 October 2020 By David Allen, Development for Conservation Q: What wine should I pair with dystopian outlook? A: All of them. There’s still a full calendar quarter to go, and I can’t wait for 2021. The future is as uncertain as it has ever been. And I’m talking...
29 September 2020 By David Allen, Development for Conservation On vacation this week, so I’m reposting a piece I wrote several years ago that seems still relevant. See you next week! When I was raising money for The Nature Conservancy, a former board member approached us about gifting...