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.
The most important value for an Annual Report is as a sales piece. Keep that in mind and make sure it tells your story in the way you want it told. Here are some DOs and DON’Ts for Annual Reports....
Donor clubs are a perfect group to solicit using a letter that is entirely written longhand. If you want to mail these letters in late September or early October – which would be ideal – you need to have the letters written in August. And...
Now that Memorial Day is behind us, there’s still time this week to mail a reminder letter for the Spring Appeal. But hurry, before school lets out and vacation season starts in earnest. There are several competing theories about second appeal letters. The first suggests...
There’s a problem with measuring your year in twelfths. It works for expenses like rent, which is the same each month. But it doesn’t work for insurance which sits at 0% of budget until the month it’s due and then zooms all the way to...
Donor events can take many forms, from field trips to coffees or luncheons, house parties, open houses at the office, and so on. In general, I separate them functionally as follows: Introductory Event, Cultivation Events, and Appreciation Events....
May is a month when you turn the corner from the campaigns of the spring to outdoor activities in the summer and plans for the fall. Build in some time for reflection for sure, but realize that it’s not too early to begin planning for...
This is the week you should send out your Spring Appeal. I’ve been asked by several clients about timing of the appeal. You can send out an appeal letter until the Tuesday before Memorial Day (the 19th) and still do relatively well. Every day you...
We’re looking for rich people who already know us and understand why what we’re doing is important. And on whatever economic scale our current supporters represent, we’re looking for the top 10 percent (or so)....
If you organize your work around weekly systems, you end up with months like this one – April – with five Wednesdays instead of just four. (We also have five-Wednesday months in July, September, and December this year.) I suggest you have a plan for...
In our zeal to reduce paper and digitize everything, we have made it harder to “know” anything about our donors. I think there should be a place where you can go and relatively quickly learn the key points about a donor and their entire...