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.
25 June 2024 By David Allen, Development for Conservation When I get challenged on the advice I provide in this blog and in various seminars and workshops, it’s usually related to not being able to cite studies and peer-reviewed papers that prove the opinion I espouse. For the...
18 June 2024 By David Allen, Development for Conservation At some point during your next organizational event, imagine yourself being between 45 and 60-years-old. You Gen-Xers out there won’t have trouble with this. Now wrap yourself in a cloak of objectivity and look around the event. Characterize it....
11 June 2024 By David Allen, Development for Conservation Somewhat lost in all the kerfuffle in the conservation community about anything and everything named in honor of Muir, Audubon, or Leopold is the more important call to think carefully about how we name anything and especially so...
4 June 2024 By David Allen, Development for Conservation There’s a spot in Nebraska on the Platte River where a large percentage of the continent's sandhill cranes gather (stopover) every March on their migratory way from the Gulf of Mexico to their northern breeding grounds. If you...
28 May 2024 By David Allen, Development for Conservation Are you ready for the election season? Me neither. Aside from the every-four-years political insanity, the presidential election always presents some challenges for fall appeal planning as well. And this year will be worse than normal. I believe that one of the...
21 May 2024 By David Allen, Development for Conservation “The systems you have in place right now either were created or evolved on their own to support the current status quo. If you want to change the status quo, you need to change the systems that support...
14 May 2024 By David Allen, Development for Conservation A few days ago, Richard Perry (Passionate Giving Blog) reposted an item he originally posted in 2021 about common strategies used by nonprofits that actually suppress donor giving. It’s interesting, because the items he lists are items that...
7 May 2024 By David Allen, Development for Conservation The secret to successful fundraising is asking. The secret to effective asking is follow-up. And the secret to effective follow-up is timing. Take a look at your 12-month renewal rate. How many households made a gift in any 365-day...
30 April 2024 By David Allen, Development for Conservation I fielded a question about premiums again last week. I get these periodically, because it seems intuitive that if someone is going to join, or give, or upgrade, or renew, they need to get “something” in return. In fact,...
23 April 2024 By David Allen, Development for Conservation Since 2017, about this time every year, I have posted about a metric I’ve wanted to collect data on – the 5-year-value of new members. I’ve been asking everyone to look back at the donors who made first gifts...