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.
9 August 2022 By David Allen, Development for Conservation It’s primary election day in Wisconsin, and I am a pollworker, so I am reprising my set of fundraising letter “rules” from several years ago. The set is based on a book by Jeff Brooks that should probably...
2 August 2022 By David Allen, Development for Conservation This week I’m thinking about what someone might need to know to make a major gift. In this sense, I am staying with my soapbox premise that the word “major” should describe the decision to give and not...
26 July 2022 By David Allen, Development for Conservation It’s a little hard to believe, but there are very few things that can go completely wrong when asking for money. Assuming that the person you are asking has heard about the organization. Assuming that the organization is...
19 July 2022 By David Allen, Development for Conservation It’s a common lament. All-volunteer organizations looking to hire their first staff position. Much larger organizations feeling everything would balance out if they just had that administrative position, or another land steward, or a Fundraising Manager, or … Well...
12 July 2022 By David Allen, Development for Conservation A couple of blinks from now, it will be August the 1st – where has the summer gone? As we cruise toward Labor Day, here’s what I’m thinking about for August. What are YOU thinking about? Getting Out of...
5 July 2022 By David Allen, Development for Conservation Many nonprofit conservation organizations have their long-term stewardship funds invested through a local community foundation. And why not? Community foundations are usually conservative in their investments, but they are very good at it – often getting better returns...
28 June 2022 By David Allen, Development for Conservation It’s a conundrum as old as the oldest land trust out there. How do you raise money for projects that haven’t happened yet? And when they do happen, how do you raise money fast enough to close without...
21 June 2022 By David Allen, Development for Conservation A few weeks ago, Vu Le posted an excellent piece on his blog Consultants, are you actually making the sector worse? Here are some questions to ask yourselves – Nonprofit AF about questions consultants should ask themselves through...
14 June 2022 By David Allen, Development for Conservation Two core fundraising ideas come together in this post. The first is that we raise money from people who already give us money. Marketing efforts to bring in new people frequently cost more money than they raise. The second...
7 June 2022 By David Allen, Development for Conservation (Most of this post was originally published in June of 2017.) Imagine a day when someone walks in the door of your land trust and offers to pay for everything you need to accomplish your mission. Not an invitation...