Do you know the two most powerful words in fundraising? Yes, it’s thank you. Showing appreciation with a verbal word of thanks, thank you notes and other signs to show your thankfulness are important in maintaining positive relationships. Of course it’s easy to show appreciation to those who have a positive outlook and gladly help […]

Earlier this month in the Fundraising Letters Q&A Audio Seminar I discussed one of the most frequently asked questions, “What makes a fundraising letter effective?” primarily by referring to leading expert Mal Warwick. Yesterday I was pleased to discover an article that he penned titled What Makes a Fundraising Letter Effective. Here’s a short excerpt: […]

Understanding basic fundraising principles helps non profit leaders better prepare themselves for raising funds. Amy Kincaid has an excellent article that describes seven realities of fundraising and how to react to them. People give when asked (and rarely when they are not). Even when people are asked, they don’t always give. So what? (a) Ask […]

I discovered the following website today, or rediscovered I should say as I’ve been familiar with Idealist.org for awhile. But their tools page stood out as a great destination to find helpful information so I thought I’d pass it along. There you can find many useful links to other websites that provide information about starting […]

One of the questions that came up several times on the recent survey was how to know who to send a fundraising letter to. Marc Pitman describes the three ways to determine if someone would potentially donate to your cause. […]

Writing a direct mail fundraising letter can be a complex task and can lead to many questions. Especially if your organization hasn’t done a direct mail campaign before, you’ll want to be armed with as much information as possible. Or perhaps you’ve sent fundraising letters in the past and are looking for better results. Now […]

A super big thank you to everyone who participated in the recent survey! There were 345 entries including a lot of really great questions. It might sound a little daunting to go through that many questions (and yes it was at first!) but actually there’s a lot of similar issues that come up often. Once […]