This article tells you how to get a second gift. According to data compiled by Giving USA, the first-time donor retention rate has hovered right around 24 percent for years. That means that of every 100 new donors you recruit this year, only twenty-four will give again. That’s abysmal. You can d...

This article stresses the importance of self-care for busy nonprofit leaders who are working sixty-hour-plus workweeks, have no time to tend to personal needs, and want to spend more time with family and friends.  Although there may seem like no way to do it, you must set aside time to take care ...

     If you want to recruit more volunteers, donors, good board members, motivated staff, and advocates for your cause, you need the community to get excited about supporting your nonprofit. Even though it’s counterintuitive, you will improve your community’s response to your appeals, and spend l...

     What are donors’ motivations to give? What are they hoping to achieve? And how do you, as the lead fundraiser, help them attain their goals? As I explain in my book The Sustainable High ROI Fundraising System: Individual Donor Motivations       “According to the 2016 U.S. Trust Study of Hi...

This week, I give you excerpts from my book The Sustainable High ROI Fundraising System to guide you in hiring fundraising staff.   The Development Director’s Role “A development director is a fundraising generalist with skills and experience in a wide variety of revenue generation activities. ...

What are your plans to increase revenues in 2022? Execute more fundraising activities? Get more participation in current efforts? Go after completely new donors? You can only do three things to realize higher net income: get more people to give, get current people to give more, and cut costs. Whi...

In What Foundations Want to Know we discovered the eight questions grant reviewers want answered. Grant Writing: What Need Do You Meet? gave us insight into how to describe the needs our program meets.  Grant Writing: How Do You Meet the Need You Describe? gave us pointers on how to write about t...

A nonprofit board has a fiscal duty to make sure that resources are raised and allocated to meet the organization’s missions. Often, however, boards have unrealistic expectations about how much money can actually be raised. They have no way of knowing, and thus planning for, how many resources sh...

Raising money doesn’t have to be complicated. The best fundraisers are volunteer ambassadors who talk about their agencies’ missions and mission impact. Not all dollars cost the same to raise though. To really know if you are making money, you need to measure net, not gross, income.  And, since i...

In any one day, a nonprofit executive director’s duties can include managing operations; satisfying funders and donors; informing and inspiring board, staff and volunteers; listening to clients; communicating your mission and accomplishments to the public; assessing community needs; collaborating...