Fundraiser Education

The fundraising industry deserves kudos for the collaborative spirit in which we have always worked, and I hope that it trickles up to other institutions as an effective way to counter the dismantling of our agencies, free speech and democracy as we know it...

Everything I knew and read about strategic planning said that it took a lot of time and money. I struggled every day to figure out how to get everything done with very limited resources. All the books I read and all the classes I attended bombarded me with copious information and theory. How could I narrow it down and make it work for me in my small nonprofit?...

There are a lot of disaster stories out there; some are just plain sad, and some didn’t even make the mailstream. One such sad story began with the creative, and the clients decided that they wanted to have a singing microchip sing a popular song about their product...

I was speaking recently with Dave Goetz of CZ Strategy, and our conversation turned to challenges facing nonprofit organizations. When he asked what I thought was the biggest challenge fundraisers had to deal with, I didn’t answer with the usual suspects...

It is of utmost importance to implement effective communication in a nonprofit organization. Why? Because effective communication leads to higher team performance, which ultimately leads to more proficiency within the organization...

The words you use on your donation page are powerful. And there’s a danger in assuming your donor understands why they should give to you just because they land on your donation page. By adding copy to your page, you can articulate those reasons clearly and increase your donations...

I (Katrina) have had several 10,000-hour thresholds in my career. I started my company, Turnkey, in 1989, so my first 10,000 hours happened around 2007 or so. By that time, while certainly not having achieved genius-level competence...

We are huge proponents of video—carefully planned video with a clear objective. In most campaigns that are focused on major gifts, we are not big fans of a fundraising video, unless there is a reason that prospective donors can’t see impact of the client’s work firsthand...

On June 5, the unanimous Supreme Court ruled that church-affiliated hospitals are exempt from complying with the Employee Retirement Security Act, a federal law that sets minimum standards for retirement, health and other benefit plans for the protection of employees and employers...

To achieve victory, a capital campaign must be won on paper before launched on the streets. Hiring fundraising counsel to conduct a campaign feasibility study is a proven and prudent way to ensure campaign success...