Managing a board of directors can be hard. I know, I’ve been in your shoes as both an Executive Director and as a volunteer board member. Trying to change your board can feel hopeless. Like pushing a huge boulder up a hill. I meet burned out Executive Directors all the [...]
Year-end giving presents an extraordinary time for nonprofits to raise more money from individual donors than any other point in the year. It is also a time when fundraisers get too creative arguably, on the wrong things – and consequently spend too little time on the right things. A quick [...]
December is around the corner and we want to share best tips for your year-end fundraising. Sit back with your eggnog, put your feet up and review our list of what you need to know so you can have the best giving season ever: 1. Share your metrics for your [...]
Here’s one little ‘trick’ to vastly improve your fundraising this year. You’re going to think I’m kidding, but I’m not. I could give you lots of tips and tools to improve your year-end fundraising success (and feel free to grab some here), but if you do nothing else but this [...]
Ready to have your mind blown? There’s a super simple thing you can do to dramatically increase your contributions. You can easily put this in place before the end of the calendar year — when most donors make their gifts. Trust me. You’re going to want to read the rest of this [...]
Email solicitations continue to be effective, accounting for 28% of all online revenue (Nonprofits Source). However, the average office worker receives over 120 emails per day (The Radicadi Group), so how do you cut through the clutter? As a former development team member myself, I’m much more critical of solicitations [...]
Exercise and fundraising. What do these activities have in common? At first glance, very little. But they take on a special meaning for a client of mine named Thea Wood, founder and President of Backstage Chats Foundation, a wonderful organization doing transformative work around music and gender equality. She groups [...]
“What’s keeping you from growing your nonprofit’s funding?” That was the first question on a survey I conducted before I spoke at a workshop for nonprofit Executive Directors earlier this year. I wasn’t surprised by the answers -- they were the same things I hear from leaders all over the [...]
There is this great scene near the start of the movie, Hoosiers. Coach Dale comes in to his first practice and the volunteer coach tries to tell him how things are run (the way they always have). Coach Dale stops practice and says it is not about how well they [...]
Someone recently asked me what I think is the most common mistake made in fundraising appeals. I had an immediate answer. Most fundraising appeals lack a theory of change. Theory of change isn’t something we talk a lot about in fundraising and yet it plays a crucial role in helping [...]
Smart fundraisers start planning their end of year fundraising as early as July. Why? Many successful organizations raise as much as 30% of their individual gifts in December along, sometimes as much as 50%! Did you procrastinate? There's still time for you to make end of year epic. You just [...]
When my kids were little, my friend Colleen made them fabulous cakes for their birthdays. The cakes were elaborate, themed and tasted great. When she delivered a cake, I tried to pay her, but she declined every time. This made me feel horrible because I wanted to pay her for [...]