A Metric System for Development Directors
This month I have been posting about hiring Development Directors. On 3 January, I made the case that hiring passion/talent and training skills was a more effective approach in general that hiring skills/experience and hoping that the successful candidate falls in love with your mission. Last week, I advocated for NOT hiring a Development Director as the organization’s first development position, but rather hiring a detail-oriented Development Coordinator instead. I emphasized the need to take training seriously and advocated for aggressive...
read moreHow to Hire Development Staff Part 2
Men and women with five or more years of experience raising money for non-profit organizations are regularly claiming $60,000 salaries and greater depending on where in the country they work and how much money they are responsible for raising. In fact the median salary for a Director of Development is now $69K; $62k for environmental organizations. So as an Executive Director of a land trust, do you swallow the price tag and hire proven experience, or do you hire less experience for a smaller salary? In a little bit, I will argue for the...
read moreHow to Hire Fundraising Staff, Part 1
Happy New Year! I will spend a good part of 2012 helping two organizations find and train new Development Director positions, and the prospect has spurred me to devote some time to researching and sorting out my own thoughts about hiring fundraising staff for land trusts. It seems like a good January topic, and I am planning to devote the next several Blog Posts to it. Let’s start with some survey facts from the Association of Fundraising Professionals: The average tenure for a Development Officer at an organization is 18 months The median...
read moreDecember is for Saying Thank You
The more I work with land trusts, the more I work with non-profit organizations for that matter, the more themes emerge that seem common to nearly all of them. One of them that seems universal is that Board members are not as engaged as they should be in fundraising. Are you as engaged in fundraising as you should be? If not, December is a great month to change that – by saying thank you. It’s easy: Look over a list of members in your area and identify at least ten members that you would be willing to call (as in – on the...
read moreAHA Moments from the 2011 Land Trust Allinace Rally
David, I thoroughly enjoyed your seminar at the recent Rally and wanted to share with you an “AHA” moment that I have had since returning from Milwaukee. Using our database, which serves as the basis of our fundraising program recordkeeping, I identified our top 150 donors and created a three ring binder with printouts of the basic record information for each donor – name/address/record of donations. This is now prominently on my desk as a reminder of where my executive director and I need to focus our efforts. I make notes...
read moreThinking About the Best Board Chair
The best Board Chair is one who knows how the organization works. S/he is a good public ambassador for the organization articulating the land trust message accurately and confidently, and lending credibility to the organization through his/her association. S/he leads with her own giving, which is significant for her, and manages the administrative side of the job well. Such a person wasn’t recruited to the Board yesterday. In fact, s/he has probably been on the Board for five years or more. Furthermore, such a person is not likely to be idle...
read moreAnonymity isn’t Necessarily Friendly
A land trust was recently confronted with a peculiar problem. A major donor with a keen and personal interest in protecting a specific piece of property offered an enabling gift equal to, and restricted to, the entire purchase price of the property. The gift amount equaled about 75% of the total “conservation costs” of the project, including stewardship endowment, closing costs, and so on. The condition was that donor’s identity and even the dollar value of the gift were to remain completely secret. Refusing the gift was never seriously...
read moreIs your lapsed member letter getting a response rate that is too good?
The following is an updated version of a post I wrote in October 2009. I recently completed a Development Audit for an organization whose Lapsed Member renewal letter returned a whopping 15 percent. When I dug a little deeper, I learned that they typically send out two renewal letters, both fairly short and to the point (half-page with a response coupon printed along the bottom). The renewals were done monthly. Unresponsive members were dropped until the end of the year when a two-page Lapsed Member letter (We miss you!) was mailed. Members...
read moreTaming the Social Media Monster
In a recent blog by Nancy Schwartz, Getting Attention Blog, she outlines seven guidelines for “taming the social media monster”. Good, solid communications stuff here. Her guidelines and my comments related to land trusts follow: Be crystal clear on why you’re using social media. Most land trusts that I work with are engaged in social media because they think they have to. Take a step back. Define more general communications goals for your land trust, and identify a piece of that structure for social media. Common goals are to generate...
read moreAre we there yet?
Just about everywhere you turn nowadays, you can find gloomy economic news about the charitable giving. A new study released by Dunham and Company of 487 adults who donated at least $20 in the past year reports that only 2 in 10 Americans plan to continue or increase their giving next year. 1 in ten plan to stop giving altogether. Giving USA has revised its estimates for 2008 and 2009 – and now says that donations fell by a higher percentage than in any other time in the past five decades. The Chronicle of Philanthropy has several articles...
read moreDavid Allen, Development for Conservation LLC
I am a fundraising consultant who has devoted the majority of my professional career to the service of land conservation. This blog is intended to help conservation organizations and land trusts pursue excellence in all aspects of their conservation endeavors. I welcome your comments and feedback to these posts. 