Fundraiser Education

Seeing some of the conversation in the media, to me, reflected a lot of common misconceptions and misunderstandings about the role nonprofits play in our society. And so we did a piece of analysis to kind of take advantage of all this attention and hope we could provide some education, and to show, for example, some of the differences between the two institutions...

Some of the world's most influential billionaire philanthropists plan to launch a powerful digital platform to harness the avalanche of data sent from satellites each day—and make it freely available for humanitarian and environmental causes. Bill and Melinda Gates—who are also custodians of legendary investor Warren Buffet's billions— have joined forces with Pierre Omidyar, founder…

Conventional wisdom says that when people support nonprofits, “it’s all about the mission.” Nonprofit CEOs and other C-suite executives say this a lot. Their supporters are connected to a cure for cancer, global warming, humane treatment of animals, etc. And when you ask constituents why they do what they do for nonprofits, this is exactly what they will say. It’s all about the kids, homeless animals, clean air...

You wouldn’t leave your house and drive your car aimlessly hoping you’d eventually find your great aunt Marge’s house in Tucson, even though you’ve never even been to Arizona. So as a nonprofit professional or volunteer, why would you just start doing random things to try to raise money for your organization and hope that the outcome is enough money?...

Commitments totaling more than $12 million will help pave the way for expanding and renovating the Skaggs Pharmaceutical Sciences Center at the University of Arizona Health Sciences Tucson campus. The ALSAM Foundation provided a $10 million challenge grant to the UA College of Pharmacy—the largest commitment in the history of the college. Class of ’67…

President Donald Trump’s budget proposal to Congress calls for eliminating social programs dating to President Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty and would cut spending on assistance to needy counties in Appalachia and the Mississippi Delta, as well as hungry schoolchildren in Cambodia. Grants for rural water projects, funds for local transit systems and a host…

Motivating everyone to get involved is critical. Last week’s blog was about cause marketing. This week’s blog is somewhat similar, but is about a company (hint: the name is in the title of the blog) that is aligning their brand with the idea of community involvement...

If getting things all the way done is a challenge, what do you find most helpful? Think back on the projects you’ve completed. Were there external conditions that forced you to finish? Have you found some other tricks that worked well for you?...

In one of the webinars I present on monthly giving, one of the polls is: “How often do you ask someone to become a monthly donor?” The answer in some 50 percent of cases is not at all. Twenty percent say once a year and others more often than that—maybe twice or three times...

Let me assure you, no matter how much success you have had with your “free-flow” approach, you would have had double the success had you been working with a system that harnessed that energy and directed it towards high-value activity—believe me...