Is Your Gift Sitting on the Shelf? Opportunities for Donor Advised Funds
This financial and social upheaval has created many new obstacles, inconveniences, anxieties and lots of serious trouble for fundraising. However if we look carefully, we find that as with most change, some new opportunities emerge. Let’s look at one of these new...A Realistic Look at Annual Funds
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...Where the Wealth is and What that Means for Fundraising
Statistics tell us wealth is concentrating at the top of the socioeconomic landscape in America. That’s something philanthropy pros need to consider. Bentz Whaley Flessner’s Jim Daniel talks about the new wealth landscape and what it means …
Confidence: Fundraising is the business of optimism. Good news on the confidence issue!
Fundraisers and their Presidents and Boards have been very nervous for the last twenty-one months over the implications of the Great Recession of philanthropy. And for good reason. The Dow tumbled about 58 percent before it leveled off in March 2009 and began a precedent-setting rally back into 5 digits. The rally lasted fourteen months but, though it got back to 11,000, it has sputtered over the last three months on a stagnant jobs market, a tumultuous political climate, the BP disaster, a flat housing market and a host of other technical and substantive issues. Donors–and institutions that must be sensitive to them–continue to be anxious. Confidence is wounded and many continue to wonder whether the wound is lethal.