Category: Fundraising tips

Site Visits in the Zoom Age

By Laurence A. Pagnoni, MPA & Sheldon Bart In what we might call the BC era (Before COVID), site visits mainly entailed a tour of your nonprofit’s facility. You took the foundation program officer or the major donor on a walk around the program site to give them a good look at your day-to-day operations. They were happy to see in action the services described in words in your proposal or application. The tour consumed most of the time available for the visit, with a few minutes left over for questions. Now, after the disease disrupted our routines (or AD),

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Kick Off Your Year-End Fundraising Drive With a Thank You

By Laurence A. Pagnoni, MPA Your year-end drive likely features written and email appeals delivered between Thanksgiving and the end of the year. That’s good … but … Before you make your appeals, you have an important opportunity to say “thank you” — and to do so in a way that is fresh and vibrant. Thanksgiving offers you a perfect hook for kicking off your year-end drive through a Thank-A-Thon — a “Thanks Bonanza” that you can start preparing for now. I cannot emphasize enough the importance of thanking donors and doing so in ways that do not come attached

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Your Questions, Our Answers on Starting Over with Individual Donors

The questions below were asked by attendees at our “Starting Over” webinar of April 21, 2021, presented by Roger Craver & Laurence A. Pagnoni.

The questions are fascinating, and we hope you’ll find our answers equally so. The webinar focused on the new rules of individual giving fundraising. We welcome your input as well by posting on our blog.

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The Fundraiser’s Annual Calendar

There is a definite flow of philanthropic revenue, peaks, and valleys, throughout the year, distinct times, like the last quarter, when more donor giving is realized. You have to understand when those moments are, and what activities work best to capture the most revenue.

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Are You Using The Pyramid of Giving?

On occasion, it’s important to return to the fundamentals of fundraising. The Pyramid of Giving is a key fundamental because it illustrates a theoretical overview of development and reminds us of the inextricable relationship between deepening donor engagement and raising more revenue.

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The Fundraiser’s Role in Eradicating Poverty—No Matter Your Mission.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr’s legacy is often simplified to anti-racism work, but his work was unmistakably intersectional and considered poverty an equally devastating societal ill.

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The CEO As Chief Fundraiser

Well, isn’t it obvious that the CEO is the nonprofit organization’s chief fundraiser?

Not really. Not when you observe the behavior of nonprofit CEOs, as I have over the past four decades.

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5 Reasons Your Development Planning Sucks

Editor’s Introduction: Nikkia Johnson’s blog post is direct by necessity. We do not mean to offend by some of the language. Sometimes great teachers need to get our attention to breakthrough to a truth. This post is important because Nikkia is speaking from her experience, she is sharing a grassroots community-centered perspective, and because her voice as a Black women is often muted within the professional field of fundraising.

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