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.
6 April 2021 By David Allen, Development for Conservation I have been privileged to work with many different land conservation organizations since I started consulting full-time in 2009. Many of them have been run by so-called “Working Boards,” which means that they either do not have paid...
30 March 2021 By David Allen, Development for Conservation Imagine this scenario: A Board member recruits a $5,000 donation from one of their friends. The actual event took the Board member completely by surprise. (This story really happened!) The donor simply called out of the blue and announced her intention...
23 March 2021 By David Allen, Development for Conservation I started fundraising by going door-to-door on a political canvas. We were asking for and collecting $15 donations to support any one of a half-dozen laws that the group was promoting in the state legislature. And I saw the...
16 March 2021 By David Allen, Development for Conservation I’m developing a new workshop this year on fundraising basics. I feel like one of the most important lessons of 2020 was that fundraising basics still matter. Organizations that had – and trusted – good fundamentals tended to...
9 March 2021 By David Allen, Development for Conservation Several years ago, Vu Le (Non-Profit AF) wrote a critique of donor-centric fundraising. In the several weeks that followed, I wrote a critique of his critique, arguing that Le’s definition of donor-centric fundraising was based on several inaccuracies....
2 March 2021 By David Allen, Development for Conservation Much is made of the “evolution” of nonprofit Boards – from Working Board to Transition Board to Governing Board. The way the process is described – using words like “maturing” and “progressing” – one might assume that the...
23 February 2021 By David Allen, Development for Conservation I know several organizations looking to replace development staff who have moved on. Several others are considering hiring new development positions. And a couple are looking to hire their first fundraising staff. Seems like a good time to...
16 February 2021 By David Allen, Development for Conservation Three weeks ago, I asked you for data related to the value of your “first-gift” donors from 2016: Isolate the members and donors you have who made a first gifts to your organization at some point – any...
9 February 2021 By David Allen, Development for Conservation Before I start into today’s post, I want to remind you that I’m collecting five-year value information again, Time to Update the 5-Year Value Metric. If you could run a couple of reports on your database and send...
2 February 2021 By David Allen, Development for Conservation Before I start into today’s post, I want to remind you that I’m collecting five-year value information again, Time to Update the 5-Year Value Metric. If you could run a couple of reports on your database and send...