Fundraiser Education

If you want gifts, you must give them. The essence of a relationship is reciprocity: give and take. When you are kind and giving, people want to reciprocate. Yet too often nonprofits put "taking" at the center of their development strategies. Do you ask, “What can we do today for our donors?” Or, do you fall into the camp that asks, “What can our donors do for us?”

The gold-lettered Donor Wall of Fame is a cornerstone of philanthropy. To entice donations, fundraisers also will deploy competitions, hierarchies of giving, and naming rights to new buildings and even to entire schools. But after years of fundraising—and being asked for money himself—Howard H. Stevenson has concluded that public recognition is not the major reason…

Another year, another three to eight conferences. And every year you learn something new, meet tons of people and walk away thinking, “That was the best conference ever!” But what really happens when you get back to your office? How will you measure the success of your conference experiences this year?

We often hear about the fundraisers who use false promises and manipulation to get gifts, but the vast majority are honest, hardworking and passionate about the causes they represent. But, I daresay, a lot of them are kind of stuck at mediocre. This is generally not a result of laziness or a lack of desire. Rather, fundraising is complex. If you want to go from “OK” to “Wow,” no matter how many fundraising hats you wear, here are some tips to keep you moving forward...

Companies that offer matching gifts don’t always do the best job of internally promoting their employee-giving programs, and as a result, many eligible donors don’t submit matching gift requests. Matching gifts are free money that your nonprofit should be claiming, and there are easy ways to improve your fundraising in this area. If your nonprofit wants to improve its matching gift fundraising, then these top five best practices are for you...

Last week, NPQ ran a newswire about what nonprofit fundraisers might be able to learn from Republican online fundraising stats, so this week we will look at what, if anything, we can learn from the extraordinary recent performance of the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign. An editorial from The New York Times calls that performance “a…

I’ve done plenty of searches as a manager of fundraisers and as a headhunter. In my headhunting role I would always ask, “Will you consider nontraditional candidates?” Even among those who say "yes" (most are honest and say no, despite my discussion of the possible advantages), it was clear that there was a discomfort with hiring an outsider. This from clients who I knew were outsiders themselves not long before. In effect, they locked the door behind them...

As the supermoon cast its blood orange glow across the night sky the other night, some religious leaders said it was a sign of a looming apocalyptic deadline. Back on earth, in the depths of campaign headquarters across the country, fear of a different date was nigh—the stroke of midnight tonight, also known as the…

In November 2005, New Orleans was still reeling from Hurricane Katrina. Homes were uninhabitable, electricity was unreliable, and most people still lacked a permanent address, let alone the appliances necessary to clean the clothes on their backs. That’s when Tide showed up with a fleet of Whirlpool washers and dryers, offering free laundry service for…

Your “first date” with your volunteer fundraisers is when they register for your peer-to-peer fundraising event. You may have shared prior secretive glances and witty repartee with them in the form of direct response or a donation, but this is the big move. You are asking them out. You have to decide if you’ll make them pay to date you: Are you going to charge a registration fee?...