Recurring Donations

With the new year comes a sense of looking forward and leaving the past behind. You’ve just finished the year-end appeal and will now gear up for the next fundraising project. But not so fast—sorry to say, your year-end fund drive is not over. It’s actually never over. Let’s talk about some of the reasons…

New Diamondbacks ace Zack Greinke will donate 1 percent of his annual salary to the team’s charity each year, reported Jon Heyman of CBS Sports. With Greinke, 32, set to make at least $31 million in each of the next six seasons, the donations will be sizeable. After leaving the Dodgers for the division rival Diamondbacks, Greinke’s new contract…

Keith is a fundraiser for a nonprofit that focuses on rescuing at-risk youth. As an organization founded and led by Millennials, this organization is the future in many ways. Keith’s frustration wasn’t slow revenue growth. He’s tuned into the healthy revenue gains he’s achieving. What’s generating his frustration is the “uneven” response he’s getting from his donors...

GiveForward, a leading medical crowdfunding website, introduced new features Thursday as it looks beyond the industry it helped pioneer. The Chicago-based company unveiled a new way for users to create their own pages to request assistance with meals, create wish lists and communicate with their communities alongside their fundraising efforts. GiveForward also announced a promotional…

I will never forget what happened to the major gifts officer (MGO) who went into the office of an owner at a very large company in California and asked for a gift. The donor said, “When you have something that has some vision and is in the million-dollar range, come back and see me. What you are proposing today does not interest me.” ...

One of the tough jobs of a fundraiser is finding time to look objectively at the current activities to spot untapped opportunities. A robust fundraising program seems to never take time off, so probing and asking "what if?" questions is frequently a luxury that simply gets pushed aside. The tyranny of the urgent often means we don't have time to find ways to better engage those donors who don't have strong commitments to our organization.

If all you do is provide a monthly giving option as a button next to your donation amount, you are missing the boat.

Use online and direct mail to start and grow a monthly giving program. Add telemarketing to the mix (if you can), and you have a truly winning combination!

So here's the latest in my semi-regular series of Fellini-esque dreams: My husband and I were trapped in a post-Apocalyptic nightmare set in a $3,000-a-night suite located in a high arch connecting two halves of a plush and elegant hotel somewhere in Dubai. Whatever it was that plunged our world into survival mode had turned…

Are some fundraisers "in love" with their donor bases but not all that fond of the individual donors? Maybe that explains some of the disservice I've seen lately.