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 April 2024 By David Allen, Development for Conservation If you have an organizational goal of reaching 1,000 donors but don’t know how to get there, this post is for you. Some of it you will already know. Some of it will be intuitively obvious. And some...
8 April 2024 By David Allen, Development for Conservation I’ve been thinking about Board Development Committees a lot lately. The word “development” in the fundraising context is short for “donor development,” meaning building relationships with organizational donors. It’s one of the core functions of non-profit governance work...
1 April 2024 By David Allen, Development for Conservation Today is not normally a day for taking things too seriously, but I need to share with you something actually quite serious. It turns out I’ve been wrong. All along. I meant well, and it seemed right – it made sense...
25 March 2024 By David Allen, Development for Conservation Joe just made a one-time gift toward a land acquisition project. Patrina just bought a couple of tickets to the Gala. Raine gave $100 in memory of an elderly neighbor who just passed away. The family is directing gifts to...
18 March 2025 By David Allen, Development for Conservation Dear Board Director: Does your organization have a Conflict-of-Interest Policy? Do you – specifically you – know what it says and how and when to use it? Is it signed by every Board Director every year? Have you seen evidence that...
11 March 2025 By David Allen, Development for Conservation I have come to believe that $100 is pocket change, more or less. It’s a very common withdrawal amount from an ATM for those of us still using cash at all. $250 is not pocket change. It’s a threshold...
4 March 2025 By David Allen, Development for Conservation Before I start in on this week’s topic, I want to ask for your help in gathering data for a future blog post. I’ve heard back from 12 groups now, and I’d like to get to at least...
25 February 2025 By David Allen, Development for Conservation Before I start in on this week’s topic, I want to ask for your help in gathering data for a future blog post. If you are willing to participate, here’s what I will need from you: Isolate the...
18 February 2025 By David Allen, Development for Conservation Beginning in about 2017, I started collecting data from readers of this blog about the five-year value of new members and donors making first gifts to their land trusts. My theory was that because recruiting new donors in...
11 February 2025 By David Allen, Development for Conservation I spent the better part of last weekend cutting up wood in my backyard. My wonderful white pines had shed several not-so-small limbs, four other trees needed pruning, and I had determined to take two of our lilac...