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.
17 May 2022 By David Allen, Development for Conservation A few weeks ago, someone asked for a post about recruiting new members. This post (and next week’s) is for them and for anyone else looking for the same information. For the purposes of this post, I am defining...
10 May 2022 By David Allen, Development for Conservation There’s a spot in Nebraska on top of a little rise where you can see grass all the way to the horizon in every direction. What you can’t see is any sign of human life. No roads. No...
3 May 2022 By David Allen, Development for Conservation Note: Most of this post was originally published in 2017. My workshop was about major gift fundraising (of course), and I had come to the part where Board members need to give themselves first. How can we ask...
26 April 2022 By David Allen, Development for Conservation Quick – make the case for me about why I should join your land trust organization as a Benefactor instead of a Patron. Or a Steward instead of a Caretaker. Or even a Family instead of a Friend. Many land trusts...
19 April 2022 By David Allen, Development for Conservation For the last couple of weeks, I’ve been writing about communicating with donors. We’re Outreaching; Are We Succeeding? Communicating with “People Who Give Money” Four Common Communications Failures I See Too Frequently And as I explained last week, communication has been on...
12 April 2022 By David Allen, Development for Conservation For the last couple of weeks, I’ve been writing about communicating with donors. We’re Outreaching; Are We Succeeding? Communicating with “People Who Give Money” It’s been on my mind because I’ve been doing a whole series of Development Audits – comprehensive...
5 April 2022 By David Allen, Development for Conservation In a by-the-book communications plan, you would define a small set of audiences with whom you want to communicate, identify the medium or media to which they are known to respond, identify the messages you wish to get...
29 March 2022 By David Allen, Development for Conservation If there is one word in land trust language that would benefit the most from tighter definition, it’s probably the word “outreach.” We have Outreach Committees, Directors of Membership and Outreach, Outreach Strategies, Outreach Events, and so on. I’m...
22 March 2022 By David Allen, Development for Conservation Somebody out there is going to laugh at this, but I just heard about Kaye Sprinkel Grace’s “AAA” Board a few weeks ago. And fell in love with it. Every Board I’ve ever met has been populated by a majority...
15 March 2022 By David Allen, Development for Conservation Don’t know whether you’re paying attention, but there is a TON of churn in the conservation community right now. Executive Directors, having come into land trust positions as a wave in the 1990s and early 2000s are now...