Fundraiser Education

Sometimes I equate my blogging schedule to SNL. SNL doesn’t go on air because it’s ready to go on air. It goes on air because it’s 11:30 p.m. Similarly, I post a blog every Wednesday. I do it because it forces me to write on a weekly basis. I do it because I think consistency…

No matter if it’s someone from a volunteer-run organization or a nonprofit with fundraising staff, I inevitably hear this comment from someone: "I don’t want to ask people for money. It makes me uncomfortable." My reply is: "Then don’t." However, then you must be excellent at communicating why people should take action. You want to…

The first time you facilitate a training, you start developing your own personal list of tips for great facilitation. You try out some things that work, and they go on your list ("I can’t wait to try that again!"). Chances are you also try out some things that don’t work, and they go somewhere else.…

At what point after a donor has stopped donating to your cause do you stop mailing them solicitation letters? Five years? Fifteen years? Turns out, it’s ever too late to reactivate your lapsed donors—if you’re sincere about it...

When I introduced the Authentic Fundraiser, I talked about the need for a less traditional sales approach. In this post, I’m going to dig a little deeper into how professional fundraising professionals should be. People have been practicing acts of philanthropy to address social needs for thousands of years. It is only in the last…

Last week, I mentioned some phrases my parents had said often (it seemed ad nauseam when I was a teen) that, in hindsight, I’ve realized relate to fundraising. Here are a few more “mom-isms” and “dad-isms” that constituted my earliest training in fundraising, whether I knew it then or not...

It’s not about you. I’m embarrassed to say it took me years to realize this. I—like you, maybe—was filled with enthusiasm for my organization. That’s good. It’s really hard to do good work when you don’t feel that way. But I let it color my fundraising perspective. This lesson can come into play in so many ways. From…

The end of the year will be here before you know it! Are you working on your year-end appeal? Crafting fundraising appeals and end-of-year campaigns is not rocket science, but you do have to adhere to certain guidelines if you want to achieve blastoff. So, here come some guidelines!...

Eighteen nonprofits from all sectors came together for two days to discuss mid-level giving. Here’s what they say is mandatory for measuring success...

Being a major gift fundraiser is one of the toughest careers you could choose. Being a successful one is even harder work. One barrier to being extraordinary in your job is a reluctant CEO or executive director. Conversely, Richard and I have seen amazing CEOs and executive directors who are just waiting on the development team to lead and manage them through the major gift waters, yet the director of development or the vice president of major gifts is not using them properly...