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How passionate are your volunteers and donors? This week I had the good fortune to be sitting with friends in Prague when I spied a young woman wearing a Mizzou shirt and pointed it out to a friend with Missouri connections. He shouted out “M-I-Z” and without hesitation, the group of young ladies responded Z-O-U! [...]
Most of us have heard of the Pareto Principle, or the 80-20 rule (80% of production comes from 20% of the resources). For years, philanthropy experts have used this economics principle from Vilfredo Pareto to explain why so much giving comes from so few people. Of course, for many of the “best” fundraising organizations, that ratio [...]
I’m no CPA, nor am I a lawyer. So, the tip here isn’t about taxes, per se. Instead, this quick note is to encourage your team to use tax time as a stewardship touch. Advancement services, aka fundraising operations, gets caught at the wrong end of the 80/20 rule around tax time. We sometimes focus [...]
Last night, 8:32 p.m. CT. A truncated transcript from a call (note: I’m sensitive to using a single anecdote to make decisions, but this was teachable moment): (me): “Hello” (some guy, about 10 second later): “Hello? Um, hello?” (me): “What can I do for you?” (some guy): “Is Mr. or Mrs. Cannon home?” (me): “This is Chris Cannon?” [...]
Participation, always a sensitive issue with trustees, is in decline at many institutions — not for lack of trying but for difficulties in simply making contact. Erosion in landlines is picking up speed, and direct mail is super-saturated. But the golden age of philanthropy has not past. These new times will require a new creativity, [...]
An uproar about data modeling was in full swing the last few days. The NYT reported that Target uses data to, well, target customers. It got one wrong (spilling the beans about a daughter’s pregnancy to her father!) by getting it right (quickly gathering, analyzing and distributing marketing based on data points that knew more about the [...]
Fundraisers get busy. Indeed, being busy can be a sign of great things to come, so long as we’re busy with the right things. But, being busy can knock you out of balance. By carefully calibrating your perceptions, your performance, and your priorities, you can ensure that your daily “best practices” are really the practices [...]
I know, I know…the year just began. However, a cursory review of multiple websites indicated that many non-profits, including those with sophisticated development shops, were not prepared for the onslaught of online giving. According to blackbaud’s Report on Online Giving, there was a 34.5% increase in 2010 over the previous year and it is likely [...]
One truism in annual giving is knowing that it is usually less expensive to keep the donors you have than finding new ones each year. Yet, we often spend proportionally more in mailing to and calling non-donors or unlikely donors than in working hard to keep those who have made gifts, especially first-time donors. If [...]
I often challenge gift officers to this simple litmus test about their call reports. (I have now already made the assumption that call reports are actually being completed!) If someone read your call report would they be offended and angry? In all fairness, they might not be thrilled that we created a record of the [...]
