But We Raised a Ton of Money!

Oh, there’s some ranting happening over on #FundraisingTwitter . . . and with good reason:  Year-End Fundraising Solicitations. Email inboxes flooded with year-end appeals on December 30 and 31st. Our friend, Ephraim Gopin, at 1832 Communications posted a list of subject lines he’d seen in just one day. (side note:  if you haven’t signed up…

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Five Fundamental Questions of Fundraising

1.  Is your Fundraising transactional or transformative? 2.  Is your Fundraising driven by the mission or the budget? 3.  Is your Fundraising an integrated core value of the organization or is it the bank account that pays the bills? 4.  Is your Fundraising ‘developing’ the organization or is it raising funds? 5.  Is your Fundraising…

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On “The Annual Fund”

I’m honored to have been invited to speak at the AFP Silicon Valley chapter.  The topic?  My favorite:  The Annual Fund Isn’t Annual. I’m equally as honored that there were so many responses to a random Twitter question I posted: I mean, goodness, Simone Joyaux even blogged about it! The over-arching, most common themes and…

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On Gratitude and Culture

I love this question from Tim Sarrantonio at Neon. Do we think enough about what gratitude is, what it means and how we truly express gratitude to our donors?  Sure, we talk about donor retention rate and the crisis it is in our sector, but do we really, truly express gratitude? Or are we implementing…

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What’s In a Name? In Praise of Development

WONDERFUL post today from Amy Eisenstein on Nonprofit Job Titles.  Touch of humor and some really good points.  We’re seeing trends in all sectors that job titles are changing to be a little more fun, a little more descriptive – saw one the other day that was “Chief People Officer” and another one was “Head…

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