1. Failure to ask for a gift. Don’t assume that your donors will know what you want them to do. Ask for a gift.  And make sure to include a reply envelope to make it easy for your donors to send their gift to you.
2. Using a dirty list. Keeping your list clean is one [...]

“Relationship” is a key word in fundraising. As part of Fundraising 101 we learn that to be truly successful we must develop relationships with our donors. We learn that a single donation is merely a transaction and that’s not good enough to sustain our organization long term. To set ourselves up [...]

Have you ever heard this saying – “You can’t keep going back to the same well – it will run dry.” You might have heard it from a Board member or Executive Director and usually this comment pops up during a discussion of grant writing or direct mail.
It’s said out of fear – [...]

The Thank You letter often is created and sent without much thought. It may seem to be the last step in getting a gift from a donor and a routine task that warrants little merit. But it’s actually the first step in securing the next gift!
Purposeful and well-thought out Thank You letters can [...]

Are you reactive or proactive when it comes to recruiting new Board members? Reactive recruiting can leave you with more problems than solutions. Unfortunately, reactive recruiting is the way that many Boards go about bringing new people in. They wait until it’s time to have new members in place and then hastily recruit friends [...]