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A Funder’s Message to Other Funders About Overhead
This article is adapted from a presentation made to Grantmakers for Effective Organizations (GEO). Our deepest thanks to Unmi Song for speaking these truths: Good afternoon; I am Unmi Song, President of the Lloyd A. Fry Foundation. The overhead …
Why is Fundraising More About Leadership Than About Skills? editor notes #93
Fundraisers never lack for advice. One board member tells you that foundations should be giving you money, while another thinks we should talk to Bill Gates. The staff thinks you should raising money from corporations. And the friend you run into at th …
Fundraising in Nonprofits of Color
Almost all research on fundraising is done on mainstream nonprofits, and almost all advice and guides on fundraising are addressed implicitly to mainstream nonprofits. Yet because they have different development trajectories, nonprofits in communities …
First Person Nonprofit: A Day in the Life of a Major Gifts Officer
So exactly how do you lead someone up to a $1 million ask? The director of major gifts at a large regional environmental organization agreed to tell us everything . . . as long as we didn’t reveal her name or organization. And best of all: post …
Charity Raters Part II: Managing Your Rating
In Part I of this two-part article, we summarized the features and criteria of six of the best known “charity raters” including Charity Navigator, Better Business Bureau, and others. Many readers added thoughtful comments and noted lesser-known raters …
Getting to 100% Board Giving
Having 100% of board members make personal donations is a cliché we don’t like. It’s not a meaningful measure of board member commitment, and typically creates a situation where even the best board members have to be nagged. BUT, if you do have this re …
Charity Raters Part I: Charting the Bad and the Bad
Wouldn’t it be great if there were an objective rating system so that donors could choose the best nonprofits to donate to just as investors use rating agencies to pick the best companies to invest in? Don’t answer; it’s a rhetorical question. Here’s w …
Donor-Advised Funds: Non-Transparent Tax Shelters for Good
Nonprofits are probably most familiar with donor-advised funds (DAFs) at community foundations: a donor gives, let’s say, $1 million to a community foundation and gets a $1 million tax deduction that year. Over the next several years, the donor …
Getting Real About Real-Time Evaluation
Every once in a while a field creeps closer to actually being helpful to nonprofits. Thanks to evaluators Clare Nolan and Fontane Lo for explaining a type of program evaluation — and how to make it work for you. Have you ever had an eval …
Take A Fresh Look at Scrip Fundraising
Wait! Scrip is not just for churches and schools anymore. Increasingly, nonprofit cultural centers, health clinics, civil rights organizations and environmental coalitions are finding scrip to be a comparatively easy way to raise funds: How …
