Fundraiser Education

This October, the Foundation Center will hold its annual Funding for Arts Month with special events, classes, and resources aimed at helping artists and nonprofit arts organizations become better grantseekers and increase their funding.

At free programs in the Center's Atlanta, Cleveland, New York, San Francisco, and Washington, DC, locations, participants can discover fundraising strategies, network with fellow artists and colleagues, and gain insight into their local arts funding community.

C-level executives Angel Aloma, Danny McGregor and Atul Tandon, along with moderator Tom Harrison, discussed the biggest issues concerning fundraisers at the DMA Nonprofit Federation New York Nonprofit Conference.

At the 2010 Bridge Conference in National Harbor, Md., last Wednesday, Tony Elischer, managing director of Think Consulting Solutions, said fundraisers should focus on the third “R” — rewriting, as in rewriting how you think and how you fundraise. To do that, he proposed looking at fundraising as four babies — brave baby, baby and the bathwater, looking to the future baby, and fully managed baby — in his keynote presentation, “Futurology 2010: Focus, Determination & Transformation."

Unemployed and low-skilled workers can significantly bolster their earning power by participating in job-training programs that are developed in collaboration with specific industries, like construction and health care, a new report suggests.

The report, based on a study of sector-based training programs in three cities, found that participants in the programs earned an average of 29 percent more than a control group—an additional $337 per month—in the year after they began the training.

Gulf Coast residents dealing with the oil that's spilling in the Gulf of Mexico. Haiti's homeless earthquake survivors seeking shelter for the hurricane season. Actors starting a nonprofit theater company. Whether fundraisers plan to solve 
environmental or humanitarian disasters, or otherwise improve the quality of life, the authors of the third edition of "Fundraising for Dummies" think they can help them accomplish their goals.

We really hope you'll join us for FundRaising Success' Virtual Conference & Expo, which takes place from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Thursday, May 20. Just about 2,200 of your peers and colleagues already have signed up. In addition to a fantastic lineup of speakers from the fundraising sector presenting sessions on vital topics, the conference is free to attend! Go here to register and check out the rockin’ agenda.

Remember Goofus and Gallant? They're two boys, brothers maybe, whose morality tales in children's magazine Highlights (that mainstay of doctors' waiting rooms) had a profound impact on the moral and behavioral development of many a boomer-aged kid — though not always the way the authors intended. (They are also, I'm compelled to mention, 
registered trademarks of Highlights for Children Inc.)

Simply put, charities need to change the way they think. In the past, it always has been cause first. After all, the cause is what the charity is there for, isn’t it? But that kind of one-way-street thinking now leads to a dead end.

Greenfield, MA, November 11, 2009 — The NonProfit National Resource Directory is sponsoring the following final fall teleseminar:

VALPARAISO, Ind., November 6, 2009 — With the nation’s unemployment hovering at nearly 10 percent, communities are struggling and more people are turning to non-profit agencies for help making ends meet. As the United States climbs back from one of the worst recessions in its history, Valparaiso University students will learn first-hand how they can make a difference in people’s lives through a course that turns them into philanthropists.