Hi Reader, When I arrived at Serving Orphans Worldwide, the board met twice a year and wasn't getting regular updates. We moved the meetings to four a year, and I started a monthly board impact report. My team wasn't thrilled at first. Each report has a letter from me, photos, a story, ministry highlights, prayer requests, and financials. It also has social media posts board members can copy if they want to share. We build them in Canva. Board members email back that they love hearing from...
4 days ago • 4 min read
Hi Reader, When I arrived at Serving Orphans Worldwide, the organization sent four fundraising appeals a year. The one mailed appeal went out at year-end, and the staff stuffed and stamped every envelope by hand around a table. The board wanted to grow beyond the churches and major donors that had funded the ministry so far. So we changed the rhythm: four emails a month (not all of them fundraising), a mailed appeal every month, and two mid-major proposals a year. We didn't add anyone to the...
9 days ago • 4 min read
Hi Reader, Early on at Food for the Hungry, our email marketing system and our home-built donation management system didn't talk to each other. We later put in a new donation management system and eventually built a connection between it and our email platform. That made an automated welcome series for new donors and leads possible. Back then, getting systems to talk was a lot harder than it is today. It would've been easy to get overwhelmed by everything a "proper" welcome series was...
11 days ago • 4 min read
Hello Reader, For years, when I hired development staff, I ran into the same problem. Every resume said “experienced fundraiser.” I had no way to know who could actually build a monthly giving program, write a grant a foundation would fund, or run an email appeal that brought in real money. So I built a set of certifications that answer that question. You don’t earn them by sitting through a webinar. You earn them by passing an exam that proves you know the work. Five are now live: CNFP:...
14 days ago • 1 min read
Hi Reader, At Food for the Hungry, we had a very young writer on staff. On a call one day, I said it might be hard for someone that young to write well for our older donors. My boss, the chief development officer, corrected me. His answer, more or less: that's their job. Their job is to put themselves in the donor's shoes. Let them do their job. He was right. A good writer doesn't have to look like the audience. A good writer has to see the world the way the audience sees it, and write from...
16 days ago • 4 min read
Hi Reader, We were in the middle of year-end fundraising at a previous organization when the first email fell flat. The easy move was to keep sending the campaign we'd planned. Instead, we stopped and asked what was missing. We quickly suspected a matching gift might change the response. So we secured a small match and tested it in the next email. The results were significantly better. That was enough evidence to go bigger. We contacted board members and other key supporters and asked them to...
18 days ago • 4 min read
Hi Reader, Friends at a relief organization once ran a Giving Tuesday campaign with no ask at all. They simply thanked their donors. So many donors appreciated the gratitude that the campaign still raised a considerable amount of money. We tried the same idea at Serving Orphans Worldwide. It flopped. People didn't give. Same idea, different donors, opposite result. It taught me something I keep relearning: your donor audience is unique. What works for another nonprofit's donors may do nothing...
23 days ago • 4 min read
Hi Reader, A development director friend told me about a list she printed last spring and couldn't stop looking at. Kara runs fundraising for an adult literacy program in Spokane. In April she pulled every donor who had given for the first time the previous November and December. There were 71 of them. Then she pulled how many had given again since. Nine. She started reading down the list and found a man named Paul Bergin who gave $250 on December 2. She went into the database and traced...
25 days ago • 5 min read
Hi Reader, A development director friend told me about a phone call she still thinks about. Denise runs the two-person development shop at an animal rescue in Asheville. Last winter an attorney called her office. A man named Walter Pruitt had died at 91, and his estate included a bequest to the rescue. $212,000. Denise pulled his record. Walter had given $50 every November for nineteen years. Never a major gift. Never a meeting. Once he'd sent a handwritten note on the back of a reply card...
about 1 month ago • 3 min read