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.
This implies that once someone has been “assigned” to a segment, they stay there for at least this year. To be most helpful, your database system should be able to handle this level of complexity – the segments to which prospects are assigned based on...
The basic idea of the system I prefer is that you mail (using envelopes and postage) a sequence of four letters. The first three are one-page, straightforward renewal letters. They contain three important pieces of information: How long they have been a member, how much...
.....the cycle of solicitation, gift, and newsletter should all work together. How can that happen if they are each written for different audiences? It makes all the sense in the world that you would want to write your newsletters with the same rules that you...
We confuse transactional donors with mission donors all the time. We even call them “members.” We send them the same types of information in the same quantities as if they were mission donors. We include them in donor reports. And we try to “renew” them...
How do we manage our jobs and careers and even our organizations? What would full-time work even look like? (Forget about part-time – part-time for nonprofits simply means part-time pay.) And if we can’t define “full-time,” how do we say NO to things that would...
The fear comes from American mythology that if you are smart enough, or worthy enough, or you worked hard enough, you won’t need help – you won’t need to ask. Consequently, merely by asking, you are admitting that you can’t do it on your own...
by David Allen, Development for Conservation "The most effective way to raise money from Millennials may be to wait until they’re in their 40's and 50's." So quipped blogger Jeff Brooks several years ago. His point was that the quest to attract younger people as donors and...
by David Allen, Development for Conservation If we could change our collective thinking in just one way, we would all raise more money – and not by just a little bit. That shift in thinking goes like this: Donors give because they want to. It sounds simple and intuitive,...
Board members who don’t give themselves will not be effective fundraisers. But Board members should not give money because they are Board members. They should give because they believe that what you are doing is worth doing – they should give because they believe in...
By David Allen, Development for Conservation Thinking about hiring a consultant? (Thinking about hiring me?) I’ve been consulting now since 2004 and full-time since 2009. In that time, I have responded to several hundred requests for proposals, and I have formed some specific opinions about how...