Fundraiser Education

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.

One thousand, six hundred and twenty-five. That's the number I blurted out months ago, off the top of my head, when folks on the ad side of things here at FundRaising Success asked me how many people I thought would sign up for our first-ever daylong virtual conference and trade show.

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.

The folks at NTEN are powerhouses when it comes to running and promoting a conference. In case you missed it, the 2010 Nonprofit Technology Conference is taking place in Atlanta this week.

I almost walked out. My first impression was, “This is the worst general session at any DMA conference I’ve ever attended.” And I’ve attended a few.

The guy seemed nice enough, but he was talking about dead cowboys buried on a hill in rural Texas. Guys who shot each other for no good reason. Texas terrain with the longest bluff in the nation and someone I never heard of by the name of Cal Farley. He played football but finally excelled at wrestling.

I was dumbfounded. Where was all this going? And did I possibly care?

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.

Charleston, S.C., November 19, 2009 — Blackbaud, Inc. (Nasdaq: BLKB) held its 10th annual Conference for Nonprofits this week in Charleston, South Carolina, welcoming 1000 nonprofit professionals from all over the world to learn more about nonprofit technology and techniques to help them succeed in 2010.