Someone recently asked me a very good question: Are in-kind donations part of fundraisers’ responsibility? Or is it the responsibility of a procurement officer? Charities love to get stuff for free. When I was a new fundraiser, fresh out of…
Write down these three things: Your favourite charity — not the one you work for How you support that charity (monthly gift, volunteer, occasional donation) Why you support them Here’s mine: My favourite charity: The Sumba Foundation How I support…
It’s easy to get so caught up in the creativity of a direct mail pack that you forget one of the most fundamental facts about it: It’s a piece of mail that goes through the postal system. And that means…
I heard the most crazy thing ever: A frustrated charity fundraiser told me that they had to cancel their annual survey this year. Why? Had it failed to work? Not at all. It was still gathering game-changing data from their…
Are premium direct mails still pulling their weight in donor acquisition? A couple of years ago, I wrote an article on my blog and a similar one on 101 Fundraising about premium direct mail. Direct mail, and in particular, premium…
Net Present Value Net present value (NPV) is a finance term that’s meant to help you decide whether an investment is worthwhile or not. It’s pretty much the same for fundraisers, who can calculate NPV this way: Total projected lifetime…
When corporations fail to invest in their future, we shake our heads and wonder why they’re so shortsighted. Think of the once-important ice-delivery companies. They didn’t realize they were in the business of providing ice; they apparently thought they were…
Dan Pallotta couldn’t have been more right with his TED talk ‘The Way We Think About Charity is Dead Wrong.’ But he wasn’t just trying to explain the importance and good that ‘overhead’ does for charities to the public and media. It’s also the charity staff who really need to…
Please DON’T email Dan Pallotta’s brilliant TED talk to your board. Recently I posted a Seven-Point Guide for Ensuring Respect of Fundraising and quite a few people got in touch to talk about their frustrations in this area. I had…
Excellent stuff from the Charity Defense Council in the USA this week. They called out the mainstream media on damaging press coverage of the Wounded Warrior Project (WWP). In summary, CBS and New York Times reported in unfavourable language about…
