International Voices on Fundraising: How to be 15 Minutes Ahead

* Be proactively accountable. Publish “the standards we set ourselves” in your annual report.

* Make sure all your job titles and donor segment descriptions are the kind donors would be comfortable with (I have come across organisations that, in addition to that hideous sounding group, “lapsed donors” — would you want to live next door to a lapsed donor? — have labelled groups of poorly performing donors as “the residue,” “the sediment” and even “the dead pool.” That’s almost as bad as the fundraiser who signed his letters under the grand title of “Director, donor targeting and segmentation.”