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.
24 September 2024 By David Allen, Development for Conservation Note: It's Rally Week - [Will I see you in Providence?] - and I am reposting this from March of 2022. If there is one word in land trust language that would benefit the most from tighter definition, it’s...
17 September 2024 By David Allen, Development for Conservation It’s the middle of September and you have a lot riding on the next few months. Seventy percent of the money given away every year is given between October and January. And half of YOUR money will come...
10 September 2024 By David Allen, Development for Conservation Last week, I reported on a webinar I attended from NextAfter, a digital marketing firm that actively conducts market research related to online giving and generosity. The post ran long, and I let it go without really exploring...
3 September 2024 By David Allen, Development for Conservation Biting on a recent email ad, I registered for a “digital first” webinar hosted by NextAfter, a digital marketing firm that actively conducts market research related to online giving and generosity. Most of my post this week is...
27 August 2024 By David Allen, Development for Conservation I looked back and saw that it had been more than seven years since I last wrote about fundraising from foundations. To a certain degree, it’s because grantwriting has never been an area of particular expertise for me....
20 August 2024 By David Allen, Development for Conservation Have you ever been to the LL Bean flagship store in Freeport Maine? It’s enormous. And the factory store itself isn’t even the only building. LL Bean occupies an entire campus of buildings. There’s an auxiliary building for...
12 August 2024 By David Allen, Development for Conservation When you sit down to write your appeal letter (or renewal letter), who are you writing to? The general public? The membership? The donors? Or to someone specifically? As if you knew them really well. Just sharing good news...
6 August 2024 By David Allen, Development for Conservation I seem to collect books that I never find the time to read. I’m probably not alone in that. I have good intentions. Some are purchased, some are gifted. But all of the hold some significant level of...
30 July 2024 By David Allen, Development for Conservation Many land trusts renew their members in the Fall and many are now scrambling to produce renewal letters. And let’s not get hung up on the word “member.” If your organization doesn’t have “members,” you still want people...
23 July 2024 By David Allen, Development for Conservation I started raising money as a canvasser in Eugene Oregon. It was to be a summer job in 1983, and it turned into a career. It’s safe to say I had no idea what I was getting myself...