You have your list of business prospects, you have your materials ready to go, and you’ve cultivated your prospects. Okay, now you’re ready to ask for funding. But wait. Are you sure you’re ready and the prospect is ready? And who is going to make the ask? How many people should...
One of the biggest problems with many development plans (as well as strategic and other plans) is that they sit on a shelf gathering dust. If the plan has all the components discussed in my previous blogs on this topic, it should be easy to implement and easily measured. Most plans fail because...
Donor Records and Development Office Infrastructure
Having a single database that will track your campaign information, allow you to communicate with your donors and volunteers, and prepare campaign reports will be critical. If you’ve never run a campaign before, this might be the first...
If you find that your organization has difficulty attracting a particular category of donors--individual major donors, foundations, organizations, or businesses--you might want to plan some special cultivation events and activities to help build relationships with these donors.
You will need to...
Whether your business is a sole proprietorship, a partnership, an LLC, a C Corporation, or a B Corporation, you can benefit by becoming a good “corporate citizen.” What does this mean? Supporting your community, financially, with your time, and with your talent.
If you are a small...
How many times has a well-meaning board member or volunteer come to one of your board meetings and offered this sage advice—“We should do a (golf tournament, gala dinner dance, art auction, walkathon, etc., etc.) because (the scouts, the hospital, a local church, etc., etc.) did one...
Diving into Organizational Culture
It’s easy to assume that consultants have seen it all. While that may be true to an extent, the dynamics behind each executive, board, and management team can take time for even the most experienced consultants to uncover. The client can help ease the...
Sometimes you wake up in the morning and just do not want to go to work! It happens to everyone. If it is just that it has been a bad day or a bad week, these thoughts usually disappear and you are ready to jump back in. However, if every day is starting to become a drag, then it may be time to...
What Smart Donors Want
We’ve probably used the SMART acronym when establishing strategic planning goals and objectives. Sometimes there are different twists on the acronym, but here we’re using: Specific, Measurable, Action-oriented, Realistic, and Timely. Here’s another way to...
In a world of Twitter, Facebook, web-based fundraising and all the other social media and Internet possibilities, is there still a place for printed marketing materials to support your development program?
As with everything else I’ve preached about fundraising, I think it all comes down to...
One of the things I’ve found in my research, and from the anecdotal experiences I’ve shared with thousands of development professionals in workshops and webinars, is that so few development offices measure the right things or, even worse, measure anything at all.
This is one of the...
Perhaps you already have a list of companies that could donate to your organization. If not, we’ll be helping you with that in another artcele. Once you have that list, the next step is to determine who the real decision makers are in each company and how you can get in front of them to...