First Thing Tuesday

18 Aug Membership Drives

Posted at 06:04h in Communication, Development Audit, Donor Cultivation, Featured, Membership, Staff Development, Uncategorized 0 Comments

I have yet to meet a land trust that felt it had enough members. On the one hand, it’s both difficult to argue with and hardly surprising. On the other hand, recruiting new members can become an obsession that results in serious neglect of the...

11 Aug Saturation Mail

Posted at 05:44h in Communication, Donor Cultivation, Featured, Membership, Staff Development, Uncategorized 0 Comments

The Town of Bolton, Connecticut has 1,998 residential addresses. The Bolton Land Trust has just fewer than 300 members. That’s a 15% penetration rate, or about 1 member for every 7 addresses. How do they do it? …..mailing to every household in Bolton several times...

04 Aug Take a Hike!

Posted at 06:07h in Board Development, Communication, Donor Cultivation, Featured, Membership, Plans and Budgets, Staff Development, Uncategorized 0 Comments

In fundraising for land conservation, we often say that “the land sells itself.” By this we simply mean that if you can get a potential donor out on the land to see, smell, touch – feel – for themselves, often that’s all you need. This...

28 Jul Direct Mail – Mailhouse

Posted at 06:06h in Communication, Featured, Membership, Staff Development, Uncategorized 1 Comment

That scenario presumes, of course, that you do not have a mailhouse doing all the work for you. If you do have a mailhouse that you work with, what you can do now is get the merge files ready to go. But you should also...

21 Jul Taking Stock – Q2

Posted at 05:55h in Board Development, Development Audit, Featured, Foundations, Plans and Budgets, Staff Development, Uncategorized 0 Comments

Back in May, I talked about periodically using some reflective time to “take stock” of where you are right now versus where you thought you’d be at this time (See Taking Stock). Presumably, if you acted on the advice, you a) redoubled your effort to...

14 Jul Board Screening of Foundation Officers

Posted at 05:48h in Board Development, Development Audit, Featured, Foundations, Staff Development, Uncategorized 0 Comments

Foundation grants should be written by the person closest to the project - the project manager or land steward. Board members have a role to play here as well, because (hopefully!) they are well connected in the community and know key decision-makers. Now – in...

07 Jul Fall Appeal Planning

Posted at 04:23h in Communication, Donor Cultivation, Featured, Membership, Plans and Budgets, Staff Development, Uncategorized 0 Comments

For many organizations, as much as seventy percent of operations funding is raised in the fall, and a healthy percentage of that comes from the fall appeal campaign. Planning NOW will help you get the most from your campaign and will help you from going...

30 Jun Lapsed Member Letters

Posted at 05:49h in Communication, Featured, Membership, Staff Development, Uncategorized 0 Comments

After sending out three or four letters asking the donor to renew, I recommend simply dropping the issue for a full year. In other words, I treat them exactly as if they had renewed their membership for a full year. And a year later, I...

23 Jun Filing/Data Entry

Posted at 05:33h in Communication, Featured, Membership, Staff Development, Uncategorized 1 Comment

If you’re like me, keeping your paper files organized and up-to-date is a task that frequently falls off the table. So here we are in June – now is a great time for catching up with data entry, too....

16 Jun Good News

Posted at 05:54h in Communication, Donor Cultivation, Featured, Membership, Staff Development, Uncategorized 0 Comments

June is a good time to share Good News as a specific strategy for advancing donor cultivation. Find something that has recently happened and that hasn’t yet been publicized otherwise. Something that you can share with your donors that they won’t have already heard elsewhere....