Releasing prospects is tough. But necessary. If you are in the trenches of daily major-gift fundraising, you are inevitably toiling to increase your prospect pool. You accomplish this through a variety of means: by mining your organization’s annual donor listing; by asking those donors already in...
Every experienced fundraiser has faced “the dreaded call.” Perhaps you reached out to a lapsed donor to reestablish a connection. As the phone rang, you were ready with introductory pleasantries and the right questions to get a sense of the donor’s relationship with the institution. You heard a...
During AFP’s LEAD conference this past October, I sat down with Ben Mohler, vice president for institutional advancement at the Kentucky Community & Technical Colleges System and executive director of the Kentucky Community & Technical College System Foundation. Last year, KCTCS made the decision to...
FRANÇAIS Text messaging has quickly become an important tool for informing, engaging, and driving action. It integrates well with traditional fundraising strategies and is reaching audiences you can’t reach as effectively with traditional methods. With read rates often hitting 98% in 2 minutes, text...
This past May, during Mental Health Awareness Month, I read a thoughtful AFP Global piece on mental health in the nonprofit sector. A few years ago, I would have applauded the growing openness of these conversations. But this time, one question kept tugging at me: Why aren’t we talking about the...
Published by AFP Global on May 26,2020, Our Right to Heal is a series of powerful personal stories about the experiences of Black women fundraisers in Canada. The creation of AFP member Nneka Allen, CFRE, Our Right to Heal features a group of Black women at various points in their fundraising...
Throughout this article, you’ll see references to “investors.” This is because Convergent approaches fundraising by reframing your nonprofit as an indispensable community asset that’s worthy of investment. When we position donors as investors, we focus on sustainable funding rather than one-time...
Mitigating risks is a natural part of running an organization, so having procedures in place to get your nonprofit back on track is crucial. However, a strictly reactive approach doesn’t capture the entire picture or best prepare your organization for the future. The most effective nonprofit risk...
Why is a book written by an ethnographer about a candy company being reviewed in Advancing Philanthropy? Because, according to the author, it is about “the making of the entrepreneur-philanthropist—‘Milton Hershey’—a hero figure of our time.” The book, by Hershey, Pennsylvania, native Peter Kurie...