Editor's Note: Show Some Love

Even though you can still spot a few happy little piles of rogue confetti that managed to outsmart the clean-up team after the FundRaising Success Gold Awards for Direct-Mail Excellence, we’re already about to launch our next awards effort — the 2006 Fundraising Professional of the Year competition.

Could we be turning into a staff full of awards junkies? Maybe … the Gold Awards were plenty fun. But that’s not it. The idea for these new awards is rooted in every experience that my staff and I have had at the many conferences and trade shows we attend and in the day-to-day dealings we have with the nonprofit world.

That’s where we meet our colleagues and readers, both current and future, and that’s where we’re continually impressed with the wealth of experience and expertise they have, as well as with the unabashed care and passion that drive them as professionals and as people.

So we’re asking you to give some thought to your colleagues in philanthropy, the people you work with or have worked for, the curmudgeon who gave you your first lesson in direct-mail copywriting, the young’n who whirled into your development office like a dervish four years ago and hasn’t stopped dancing since.

And because we know that many organizations rely heavily on their partnerships with innovative and hard-working consultants and the folks who work at agencies and service/product providers, we’ve created special awards categories just for them. Each section — on the agency side and the organization side — has the same categories: Fundraising Professional of the Year; Top Women in Fundraising; Top Fundraising Professionals Under 40; and Lifetime Achievement (for those who’ve been at it 30 years or more).

Judging won’t be points-based, but instead will depend heavily on information provided by those of you who make nominations and the impression you make on our as-yet-unnamed panel of judges.

All nominations, whether mailed or faxed, must be in our offices by the close of business on Friday, Dec. 16. And the winners will be announced in the February issue of FundRaising Success. What better month to let the stars of the fundraising universe feel the love?