Who among us has ever felt out of place, like we don’t belong, like “if they only knew…”? I’ll be the first to raise my hand. I did not graduate college right out of high school like I planned. Instead, I got pregnant, got married, had more children, divorced, and…

April signals the end of the first quarter of the year and the beginning of serious fundraising. We’re headed back to the big fundraising luncheons, fashion shows and galas. And let’s not forget the golf tournaments and clay shoots. It’s also the time to meet your donors and make your…

Spring is in the air! Do we dare hope that COVID is on the downhill slide? Just about everyone is ready to be around other people and open-air restaurant patios are one of the best places to Cultivate donors. Now that you’ve identified your prospective donors, it’s time to contact…

There are four stages of the donor cycle: Identification, Cultivation, Solicitation, and Stewardship. During the month of February my weekly zoom webinar, About Fundraising, will look at the task of Identification from various points of view. Research Basics Building a Prospect Donor Profile LYBNTS and SYBNTS Best Practices, Next Steps…

Are you a team of One or do you supervise a department or a whole organization? When planning my monthly newsletters and weekly About Fundraising webinars for 2022, I decided to organize everything around monthly themes. The theme for January is Teams. Each Thursday at noon, CST, on About Fundraising,…

What a year, again! Just when we thought the pandemic was behind us and we were taking a collective deep breath, it reared its ugly head with a makeover, Delta variant. My extended family has experienced the death of a loved one due to COVID and I am grateful that…

We're Sill Here, 4th Quarter End of year fundraising, wrap-up, evaluation and getting ready for the new year is so important, it needs 2 newsletters. Are you paying attention? Are you working your plan? Is everyone on board with raising a huge portion of your funds this last quarter of the…

Here we are, 4th Quarter It’s been documented year after year that at least 1/3 of a nonprofit’s revenue is raised in the last 3 months of the calendar year. And, 12% of that happens in the last 3 days of the December. Giving Tuesday is becoming more popular among donors…

Are you one of those fundraisers who only thinks in dollars? Annual giving Recurring gifts Sponsorships Ticket sales Dollars are very important for a nonprofit organization, there’s no question about that, but there’s more than one way to have an impact on the bottom line. Most of the examples I’m…

When I think of passive income, I think of trust funds, stock dividends, and real estate investments. However, these are not options for nonprofits that want to add passive income to their revenue streams. The best passive income for a nonprofit is an endowment, but unless you’re a university, hospital,…