22 Aug Opening Lines
Over the course of time, I join many organizations – always at the $50 level – specifically so I can see their fundraising material later. And I see a lot of bad and ugly – as well as quite a lot of good to great....
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.
15 Aug The Hidden Fact That Will Change the Way You Write Appeal Letters
Writing and editing fundraising letters is better thought of as an exercise in technical writing, than as writing actual letters. There are techniques, rules, and form to the exercise that, if followed closely, will help you raise more money. Many of these techniques are counter-intuitive....
08 Aug Don’t Overdo Renewal Letters
Renewal letters need to do three things: They need to remind me of WHY I’m a member. They need to remind me of what I gave last year. And they need to suggest an increased level of support this year. And they need to do...
01 Aug Fundraising Net Versus Fundraising Gross
This is what I’ve been talking about as a missing step in Strategic Planning. Instead of including “resource development” in your exploration of various goals and strategies, and plugging in reasonable extrapolations of what you are already doing now – or worse, instead of paring...
25 Jul What Makes a Good Letter of Intent?
The final form of the LOI is as a Business Letter. Make sure to use board stationary for the first page and that it is addressed and dated properly. I recommend doing the legwork to find a real person to whom it should be addressed...
18 Jul Make Plans to Give AND Get This Year
The level of your giving also sends a signal to the public. Donors – including you – think of different organizations differently. When you, as a board member send $100 or less, or even $200 or $500, you signal how the Board considers this particular...
11 Jul Do You Have Enough Prospects? – A Fresh Take on Gift Charts
Most of us are familiar with the basics of a gift chart – a list of gifts needed to make a specific goal with higher-level gifts listed first and smaller gifts listed below in descending tiers, sometimes called a donor pyramid. Gift charts are commonly...
05 Jul Got Story?
.....giving yourself permission to make these stories personal by visiting the sites you need to raise money for will help you a lot. It will make you more effective when you talk about it. It will help you imagine taking donors there. And It will...
27 Jun Fish Ladders and Project Prospecti (or Maybe Prospectuses)
We were talking fish ladders. The problem was that many of the culverts on the river were set up too high. The culvert did a great job of moving water under the roadway without damaging the roadbed. It did a lousy job helping fish get upstream,...
20 Jun How Much Does Fundraising Cost?
The job of fundraising, then, is to build a program of interrelated strategies (membership, campaigns, events, planned giving, and so on) that delivers a net result large enough to meet the organizational need. The mission is perpetual, so the fundraising strategies must be designed to...