Fundraiser Education

The entire nonprofit community—in the U.S. at any rate—is obsessed with “major gifts.” You know the ones. Those gifts, which are of such size, that create big waves as they wash up on the beach of the nonprofit...

DonorsChoose.org, the nonprofit organization dedicated to funding children’s educational needs, launched its Student Life Essentials Program earlier this year. Prior to the launch, DonorsChoose conducted a survey that included 2,000 teachers who were from high-poverty schools throughout the nation...

Generating compelling success stories won’t happen by magic. In order to get the stories, you need to help your staff understand the importance of stories in the organization’s marketing and fundraising efforts and to feel comfortable asking clients for their stories...

Every few years, my husband and I venture out for some springtime skiing—when the skies are bluer, the temperatures are higher and the crowds are thinner. As I catch my breath from a day on the slopes, I’m reminded that spring skiing has some similarities with fundraising...

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…