Archive for the ‘ Measuring Effectiveness ’ Category
Your Fundraising Plan Checklist
Here is a Fundraising Plan Checklist that you can use every time you start a new appeal, campaign, event, or grant proposal. How much do we want to raise? Are you going to try to raise $3,000 with your annual report? Are you going to try to raise $20,000 with an event? What is a [...]
Teaching other people how to fundraise
Are you the lone development person, or even part of a small team? What is one of your biggest problems? If you answered “Capacity” I think you’d be right. How can you build your capacity to raise more money? Well, you can’t put more hours in the day, and you can’t hire more people. Budgets [...]
Are You Fundraising in a Small Shop?
If you are fundraising in a small shop, I salute you. It is hard. You come to work and often receive no kudos or respect for what you do. I want you to know that I know what you’re going through. And I appreciate that you take a small part of your limited time to read this.
Myth of the Naked African Child: When Your Donations Hurt
One thing I learned when I was volunteering at nonprofits overseas is that people don’t necessarily need what you think they need.
Volunteering. What's in it for you?
Do you get to do things you like to do, when you volunteer? Or do you feel taken advantage of?
Your Overhead is In Your Head. All of the money is going to the cause.
So, you’re talking to a donor and the first thing they want to know is: How much of this donation goes to the cause?
This has become the only standard by which a nonprofit is judged deserving on funds. And this is truly sad.
Why your nonprofit is so damn reactionary
When you discourage long-term vision, you institutionalize suffering.
When funders and donors have a need for immediate gratification, your nonprofit always loses.
8 ways NOT to write a fundraising plan
Here’s how NOT to write a fundraising plan. 1. First, make sure you make it in total isolation. You don’t want any input from any other staff or board messing it up. 2. Make it focused solely around one or two income streams, like one big event and a government grant. Because what could go [...]
How can you build trust in your nonprofit?
“RICHARD WILKINSON: (With a large wage gap) almost everything gets worse: homicide rates, how kids get on at school, math and literacy scores, teenage birth rates, obesity. Mental illness is worse, how much people feel they can trust others, the size of prison populations, what proportion of the population are locked up, measures of social cohesion, how much people are involved in community life. Everything seems to get worse.
BILL MOYERS: Levels of trust among people are affected by the distribution of income?
RICHARD WILKINSON: I think it’s something that people have had an intuition about for centuries. They have often regarded inequality as divisive and socially corrosive. And our data shows that this intuition is much truer than any of us ever realized. We choose our friends from amongst our equals. People don’t feel so at ease with people who are much better off.
BILL MOYERS: Inequality makes strangers of us?
KATE PICKETT: That’s right. At one point, we wanted to call our book, “Inequality: The Enemy Between Us” because in a more unequal society, the social distances get stretched out between us. As the hierarchy gets steeper, social distances are greater, and it’s harder to trust.
Why does your nonprofit fail to accomplish its mission? 3 reasons.
1. Status Quo Culture A status quo culture, which means nobody striving for more efficient and effective activity. Because their salaries are not tied to actually solving the problem, in any way. Nor are salaries tied to how much money they raise. Nor are salaries tied to any measure of client satisfaction or employee satisfaction. [...]
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