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.
By David Allen, Development for Conservation When your blog title is "First Thing Tuesday," you always end up publishing on Election Day. And so it is today. And I work as a pollworker today, and I have neither the time nor the inclination to think about...
27 October 2020 By David Allen, Development for Conservation Last week, I ended my post with the words: We are the ones we have been waiting for. They weren’t original. They are from a poem that had been passed to me through enough hands that I needed further research...
20 October 2020 By David Allen, Development for Conservation As a fundraiser, I can honestly say that the future has never seemed more uncertain than it is right now. In many ways, it feels like we are teetering on the edge of something truly horrible (great depression?,...
13 October 2020 By David Allen, Development for Conservation Rally week has now come and gone. It was my 15th Rally, not that it’s important, but the 2020 version was certainly different from the other 14! Nearly 4,000 people registered. Holy cow! The workshop I led had nearly...
6 October 2020 By David Allen, Development for Conservation Q: What wine should I pair with dystopian outlook? A: All of them. There’s still a full calendar quarter to go, and I can’t wait for 2021. The future is as uncertain as it has ever been. And I’m talking...
29 September 2020 By David Allen, Development for Conservation On vacation this week, so I’m reposting a piece I wrote several years ago that seems still relevant. See you next week! When I was raising money for The Nature Conservancy, a former board member approached us about gifting...
22 September 2020 By David Allen, Development for Conservation Here’s a great idea that deserves another mention: Send $50 to five different organizations you admire. It will cost your land trust $250, and it will take about half an hour. But for that investment, you will see every piece of...
15 September 2020 By David Allen, Development for Conservation First of all this week, let’s all take a moment to consider the members of our land trust community who are suffering due to the fires in the west. I have received several heartbreaking emails and messages from...
8 September 2020 By David Allen, Development for Conservation Readers, I’d like you to meet my new friend RGF. RGF stands for Realty Gift Fund, and they buy and sell real estate for nonprofits. RGF, I’d like you to meet Readers. These are some of my best friends...
1 September 2020 By David Allen, Development for Conservation Numbers are just numbers. Five, 23, 478. Meaningless. We use numbers all the time, expecting them to convey importance. Four species, 42 acres, 55 years old, 300 members. But they don’t. Or at least they don’t convey any more importance than...