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.
10 January 2023 By David Allen, Development for Conservation If you graduated from college, you know that the Alumni Association from your alma mater started calling you and writing you about ten minutes later. And in return for your annual gift, you get a copy of the...
3 January 2023 By David Allen, Development for Conservation Happy New Year! Time to start again. January of another year. 2022 is over. Fa, sol, la, ti, Done. And that brings us ‘round again “to Do.” 2023 yawns before us. It could be anything. It definitely will be something. What will...
27 December 2022 By David Allen, Development for Conservation A good friend was asked recently to prepare a few remarks for his church on the subject of Hope. As I had just completed my annual Holiday messages with a theme of Optimism, it started me thinking about...
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...
13 December 2022 By David Allen, Development for Conservation I subscribe to a couple of essay aggregators in addition to four or five blogs and three newspapers. More than I can possibly keep up with. So, most of the time, I find myself skimming the headlines more...
6 December 2022 By David Allen, Development for Conservation So how are you feeling about 2022? Got your fundraising goals all knocked out? Feeling like the corner got turned from COVID back to some relative normalcy? Or maybe you’re still anxious about the end of the year. Somewhere in...
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...
22 November 2022 By David Allen, Development for Conservation Many of us are familiar with the concept of matching gifts. And with Giving Tuesday right around the corner, finding matching gifts is on most of our minds. And not too long ago, I posted about Legacy matching campaigns...
15 November 2022 By David Allen, Development for Conservation Have you ever known something completely and been just as completely inept at explaining it to someone else? That’s the way I feel about the tax-deductibility of in-kind gifts. So here’s another attempt. Let me know if this makes...
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...