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Are You Stewarding Your Donors?

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A few weeks ago, I wrote an article called Prospect. Cultivate. Ask. that detailed the process of moving new prospects from investigating your non-profit to investing in your mission.  An astute reader e-mailed me after the article was published to remind me that I forgot one important piece of the puzzle: stewarding donors after they [...]

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Taking the Fear Out of Fundraising Asks – with Marc Pitman

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Today, we’re kicking off a new, semi-regular series called “Learn from an Authority,” where we will interview the best and the brightest in non-profit fundraising to learn from their expertise. We’re starting with Marc A. Pitman, “The Fundraising Coach.”  Marc is a successful consultant, author, speaker and blogger and is an expert on making fundraising [...]

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How to Break Out of the Non-Profit Sandbox

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An organization that I talked with recently is stuck in the non-profit “sandbox.”  That’s my term for organizations where everything seems to be ok, but just ok.  Nothing is super exciting, or moving along super-fast, but nothing is going wrong either.  Fundraising is ok… PR is ok… staffing is ok.  Everything is… ok. I know [...]

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Why Silent Auctions are a Good Idea – Even Though They’re Lots of Work

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Holding a silent auction is a lot of work.  It takes time and energy to find and catalog all of those items that are donated for the auction.  It takes a lot of effort to set up and tear down the event, generate interest from attendees, find sponsors, and coordinate the bidding.  In fact, many [...]

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How to Find Strong Candidates for Your Board of Directors

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It’s hard to deny that the strength of the board of directors plays a crucial role in the fundraising success of a non-profit organization.  An amazing, supportive, well-connected board can make your non-profit’s development work far easier.  Likewise, a lackluster board will significantly hurt your fundraising capabilities.  How can your non-profit find strong new candidates [...]

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Review of 5 Days to Foundation Grants: The Secrets to Writing Funded Grant Proposals

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For most non-profit organizations, the ability to write more grants… and to have more of their grant proposals funded… seems like an unattainable goal.  Writing grants takes time… and writing fundable grants takes a lot of time, or so most development officers think. This past week, I had the chance to read 5 Days to [...]

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Analyzing Fundraising Strategies through the 80/20 Principle

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Guest Post by Ian Adair When I speak to nonprofit and education professionals involved with fundraising the discussion inevitably turns to the ROI of funding strategies currently in place and ways to improve.  I think many nonprofits have explored various types of funding sources and to some extent have a diversified fund development plan in place. [...]

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Prospect. Cultivate. Ask.

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That’s the cycle.  It’s simple, yet extremely complicated.  It’s what non-profit fundraisers do. If your development office isn’t meeting its goals, ask yourself… in which of these three areas are you missing the mark?  It’s easy to say things like, “we’re not meeting our goals because we’re not spending enough time on social media,” or [...]

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