13 October 2020 By David Allen, Development for Conservation Rally week has now come and gone. It was my 15th Rally, not that it’s important, but the 2020 version was certainly different from the other 14! Nearly 4,000 people registered. Holy cow! The workshop I led had nearly...
1 September 2020 By David Allen, Development for Conservation Numbers are just numbers. Five, 23, 478. Meaningless. We use numbers all the time, expecting them to convey importance. Four species, 42 acres, 55 years old, 300 members. But they don’t. Or at least they don’t convey any more importance than...
16 June 2020 By David Allen, Development for Conservation This topic comes from a Reader Question, which in turn came from a discussion thread on the Alliance’s Learning Center: The discussion regarded using a "membership" framework in direct mail, etc. I hesitate to get rid of it because...
5 May 2020 By David Allen, Development for Conservation WARNING: This post contains geek material. Last Fall (seems like another lifetime), I coordinated a direct mail collaboration between five conservation organizations – three land trusts and two river groups. The collaboration featured a collective rental of Nature Conservancy...
By David Allen, Development for Conservation I’ve never been a fan of gift memberships or member-get-a-member campaigns, because the renewal rate on these types of memberships is so dismal – ten percent is about as good as you could hope for. So I had my usual...
By David Allen, Development for Conservation My mother and her husband recently moved from Estes Park, Colorado to Portland, Oregon. In celebration and support, my wife and I bought her a membership in the Oregon State Parks Foundation, a day-use parking sticker for their car, and...
By David Allen, Development for Conservation I have three short offerings this week, beginning with this new study: A study released in March by the IUPUI Women’s Philanthropy Institute and the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy feels important to me, and I think you’ll feel the same...
Writing and editing fundraising letters is better thought of as an exercise in technical writing, than as writing actual letters. There are techniques, rules, and form to the exercise that, if followed closely, will help you raise more money. Many of these techniques are counter-intuitive....
By David Allen, Development for Conservation Your land trust probably uses events for all sorts of reasons. You might have an annual “olly-olly-oxen-free” member meeting. Maybe an annual fundraising event, gala, or auction. Maybe an event just to show donors how much you appreciate them. And then...
By David Allen, Development for Conservation As I reported in my study of five-year values, (see 5Yr Value: The Metric that Tells You the Most About Your Fundraising), organizations with a higher-than median five-year value (2014 donors) tended to be actively engaged in raising money (from...