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.
27 July 2021 By David Allen, Development for Conservation We are environmental organizations! We need to STOP sending so much stuff to our donors. They feel overwhelmed! Especially in the mail. Think about this: the average American household receives 2,000 pieces of “junk” mail every year! If we...
20 July 2021 By David Allen, Development for Conservation Josh Spector is an entrepreneur’s entrepreneur who runs a company called Newsletters Creators. He recently published a set of practices that will help organizations get more out of their eNewsletters. The practices are taken from his course, Newsletter...
13 July 2021 By David Allen, Development for Conservation Every year about this time, I start thinking that we will be asking just about every one we know for a gift between now and the end of the year. Some will be renewals. Some will be asks...
6 July 2021 By David Allen, Development for Conservation Every year about this time, it occurs to me that we will be asking just about every one we know for a gift between now and the end of the year. Some we will ask for renewal gifts....
29 June 2021 By David Allen, Development for Conservation Thursday this week is July the first. Every year about this time, it occurs to me that we will be asking just about every one we know for a gift between now and the end of the year. In...
22 June 2021 By David Allen, Development for Conservation For several years running, I had the great privilege of helping raise money for Nature Conservancy projects on the Door County Peninsula. We would meet people a small county airport (Cherryland Airport), load them up in a van,...
15 June 2021 By David Allen, Development for Conservation Much of this post was originally published in 2014. I have updated it and reprised it, because I am noticing a significant uptick in the number of organizations considering campaigns and feasibility studies. I hope it is helpful. So...
8 June 2021 By David Allen, Development for Conservation It’s June! Welcome to summer! From a fundraising point of view, think about this: You will ask just about everyone currently giving money to make another gift between now and 12/31. How much will you ask them for? I get asked...
1 June 2021 By David Allen, Development for Conservation As a broad generalization, organizations that were dependent on fundraising events did not fare as well in 2020 as organizations that were not. For some, this was related to the transactional nature of events – when the event...
25 May 2021 By David Allen, Development for Conservation An important concept in fundraising is that of “access” to current and potential donors. Access in fundraising implies that if you call, she will answer; that if you send an email or leave a voice message, it will...