Thought Leadership

Our newest white paper, Blending Data Governance and Constituent Engagement to Build an Inclusive Database, approaches this topic in-depth and concentrates on leveraging the union of data governance and constituent engagement to achieve data inclusivity for your organization.

Whether you are building a new grateful patient program or simply evolving one, the best prescription is a healthy dose of trust. It is not always easy to build trust with development professionals so that physicians feel comfortable entrusting fundraisers with the precious relationships they hold so dear when caring for a patient. BWF’s Kara Wagner describes potential obstacles and ways to overcome them.

For communications professionals caught in a crisis, nothing is straightforward and results for the organizations they represent range from embarrassing to catastrophic. Crisis communications plans are, at their core, highly detailed road maps designed to take you from the beginning of the crisis to its conclusion. BWF offers these five core components to help you get ahead of any crisis.

This partnership with BWF helped SDSU become more data driven, have clearer insights into its operations, have the ability to make strategic decisions and make them faster, and have a better way to validate its strategy, thereby saving both time and resources.

No longer is it enough to be the best fundraiser in the room. Leaders of the modern fundraising enterprise have the responsibility and privilege to be so much more. Through a commitment to character development, continual learning, confirming the fundamentals, innovation, and modeling excellence, the leader of a development program can bring out the best from their team and build a successful program of significance. This preview of BeneFactors showcases the depth this book offers.

In just six weeks after the Ice Bucket Challenge began, the ALS Association saw $115 million in donations, and today, there is a new drug that shows real promise. But the success of the challenge often leaves board members and advancement leaders wondering, “How can we do this too? Is it worth trying to recreate the magic of viral success?”

If you work in healthcare, you likely have been the recipient of a call from a donor looking for help. The donor might be asking for help scheduling an appointment (often seeking a slot sooner than what the donor could get on their own), securing a private room, assisting a friend or family member in a medical crisis, or smoothing out a challenging healthcare experience. These requests raise a host of ethical and logistical challenges. Forces in society and the healthcare industry are shaping contemporary views of facilitated access programs. From healthcare equity to labor shortages to burnout, difficult times put more pressure on philanthropy to deliver.

Many nonprofits are questioning why the new MasterCard rules are being applied to recurring gifts. But as we at BWF think about the next generation of annual giving, this is not the right question. This article reframes this problem into positioning recurring gift offers as an opportunity for nonprofits to create a deeper, more meaningful relationship with donors—to move past the transaction and into engagement.

Understanding your organization in such a deep and real way takes time, energy, and effort, but the rewards are immeasurable. BWF’s Jay Wilson discusses why unique selling propositions (USP) work so well and what development offices can learn from these giants of corporate marketing and communications.