Fundraiser Education
November 12, 2015 at 9:51 am
Donor-advised sponsors have elbowed their way into the top ranks of U.S.-based charities, according to The Chronicle of Philanthropy’s list of the 400 nonprofits that raised the most private support in fiscal 2014. Five donor advised funds (DAF) managers, plus one community foundation that derives much of its support from DAFs, are among the new…
November 10, 2015 at 6:00 am
Knowledge is not power. If it was, anyone with a skill for googling would be successful. It’s what you do with what you know, how you apply it to your donors and how you implement, that will truly determine your success. Mastery is a new form of learning. I challenge you to adopt it. So, how can you get started?...
November 9, 2015 at 8:57 am
Giving money to charity can be a great idea and might be top of mind as the holidays near, but donating with a charity credit card? Not so much, experts say. It's not that so-called affinity credit cards are evil. Charging purchases on a card with an endangered tiger or a pink breast cancer ribbon…
November 6, 2015 at 9:31 am
When I took my first assignment in the nonprofit field at a university, I knew nothing about the profession. I was blessed to have the No. 2 in the organization spend time teaching me the ropes. As you prepare to help others in their nonprofit professions, they will seek ways to gain knowledge and experience that will prepare them for career advancements. Here are some ways that I found helped me...
November 6, 2015 at 8:59 am
Loss aversion can cause you to make bad decisions in order to preserve the status quo, which you perceive as a more positive condition than the unknown. But biases compete. The optimism bias can help you by crowding out loss aversion, helping you make necessary changes. But optimism bias can hurt you, too, by leading you to make high-risk decisions...
November 5, 2015 at 10:31 am
When it comes to using technology to solve humanity's problems, so much more can be done. That's how Chase Adam feels about it anyway. “It's crazy that there are huge engineering teams figuring out how we can add a different filter to our photos, but there are so few people using the Internet and technology…
November 5, 2015 at 10:11 am
We now are faced with the last eight weeks of the year, the time when we are “make or break” for our fundraising year. Even if our fiscal year ends at another time, the calendar year-end drives a lot of donations. The following are some ways to that can help you focus your fundraising efforts these last eight weeks of 2015...
November 5, 2015 at 9:41 am
Lori, the executive director of a social-service agency, shared with me her frustrations with the “flat” performance of the agency’s fundraising. There haven’t been any revenue cliffs or disasters. But no growth, either. She related the agency’s overall fundraising plan to me. It sounded solid. So why has its fundraising revenue been treading water for more than five years?...
November 4, 2015 at 10:24 am
As nonprofits gear up to promote Giving Tuesday—the post-Thanksgiving fundraising day—they usually highlight it as a counterpoint to the consumerism of the Black Friday shopping extravaganza. But that doesn’t mean it’s smart to ignore all the lessons that successful retailers have learned after years of promoting holiday sales. Among them: A sense of urgency is…
November 4, 2015 at 10:16 am
In a decision that will affect fundraising efforts for THON 2016, the Penn State Interfraternity Council/Panhellenic Dance Marathon has canceled the third canning weekend of the season. One of the two main reasons for the cancellation is the inability to ensure volunteer travel safety. The second reason is “forced fundraising,” a term coming from a…
