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A crowdsourced blog on fundraising and changemaking.

If only we could be like Chimpanzees

6132905924_b09da86926_mWho doesn’t love a good office gossip on Monday morning? Since this blog is a safe haven for us as fundraisers, it is time to share our real feelings about our non-fundraising colleagues. You know whom I mean.

No, not the communication team! They are all right. Besides that: we still need them for our donor magazine and to get our ‘donate-now-button’ on the website. What about the colleagues sitting on the other side of the corridor? No, neither the guys from the program! All though they have no clue about fundraising, they can provide us with concrete and tangible projects for our fundraising campaign. (more…)

Hanneke Propitius

Speed Dating Is Not the Path to a Great Board

around the tabelA great board should be a force multiplier filled with “connectors to mission-critical constituents” as Jon Glaudemans of Ascension Health says.  People who know and care about our mission and organization.  Leaders who have integrity, grit, empathy, humility and the will to succeed on behalf of the people, beliefs and planet we serve. Generous people inspired by what we do, wise workers and committed philanthropic investors.

Yeah, right.  Are you rolling your eyes or wiping them because you believe in the list but have no hope of getting there? (more…)

Karen Osborne

Fundraiser, are you too busy to change the world?

email timeI wonder if, like me, you sometimes feel this modern world is going just too fast? Perhaps, as I am, you’re increasingly coming to doubt that the many technological advances of our times are actually making our lives easier and better, like they promised they would? By any chance, does your daily email mountain also seem to you ever harder to climb and less interesting to boot, as mine does? Or does it trouble you, as it does me, that while you can now be reached by telephone pretty much wherever you happen to be, (more…)

Ken Burnett Ken Burnett

A DIY workshop for lead conversion: Do try this at home!

In February I met with fundraisers in Amsterdam to brainstorm how we could engage our various supporter relationships (‘leads’ or prospects) to move them to become donors to our organizations.

And while I suspect that most came to the session “Turning Likes into Cash” to hear the closely held secret to raising donors via social media (spoiler: there isn’t one), I would like to think that most participants left with at least one practical idea that they didn’t have before the session. (more…)

Sarah Clifton

So you want to grow your income? Use the C word…

GrowthAt =mc we’ve been working a lot recently on fundraising and income growth strategies with a range of agencies- from global ones like UNICEF to national ones like AIDS Fonds/Stop Aids Now! in Holland. We’re also helping a number of local museums in the UK cope with local government cutbacks.

The strategies we were discussing for these agencies were obviously very different and were designed to deliver very different outcomes. (more…)

Bernard Ross

Don’t forget your pen: Do’s and don’ts of digital fundraising

I spent my entire summer in a summer course studying digital innovation with a bunch of 19-20 year old university undergrads. Apart from making me feel very, very old, they also taught me a few very valuable lessons.

Watching them all getting writers cramps one by one during the written exam – which at the LSE is a deliciously 20th century style affair done by pen and paper – taught me the most valuable lesson of all: It is dangerous to abandon your analogue skills even in a digital world. (more…)

Maia Kahlke Mikkelsen

The ask that got the fundraiser

Last week was one of the UK’s largest small donation programme spectacles… Comic Relief. This annual campaign, now in its twenty fifth year has raised over £800m for use in the UK and abroad tackling social injustice and improving the lives of millions. Capturing the heart and imagination of the UK, it has grown from a single day event into a sustained build-up of programming, activity and fundraising that culminates in over seven hours of televised entertainment and fundraising pleas. (more…)

Damian Chapman