The Good Steward

A few months ago, I was interviewed by Allison Jones of Idealist (who is also a dear friend and has a great blog that you should check out) about varying topics including my path into fundraising, my family background and some of my non-fundraising passions.  I hope that you will check out the resulting post on [...]

One of the many highlights of the first day of the 2013 AFP International Conference on Fundraising was to hear from Grammy Award winner John Legend about his philanthropic work in education. One particular lesson that he shared during his conversation with AFP Board Chair Bob Carter was about making time to be creative.  Legend [...]

As International House’s Board Chairman retired last year, the Board announced that it was designating an endowed fund to  benefit programming and resident scholarships named in honor of the outgoing chairman.  In addition to the funds designated by the Board, my office was charged with raising additional monies in support of this named fund from [...]

Last week, Association of Fundraising Professionals International CEO Andrew Watt participated in the New York City Chapter’s Annual Membership Meeting and had a lot of great things to say.  One of the smart and particularly easy ideas that he suggested was to ensure that the organizational description in your annual 990 report really tells your [...]

I recently attended an event with the founder of a national search firm that manages many fundraising searches annually. One of the interesting things that he advised was to stay in a fundraising position for a minimum of 3 or 3.5 years.  In his opinion, results from your first two years of any position are [...]

As I am currently knee-deep in data for International House’s Fall Appeal, I thought it would be timely to share a dear friend and mentor’s story of a year-end appeal that she received from a school that she attended.  I’ll let her tell it . . . I received the company’s year-end appeal — a [...]

I am very proud to have been elected to the National Board of the Young Nonprofit Professionals Network a few months ago.  YNPN’s mission and specific focus on assuring the future of the non-profit sector resonates with me deeply.  The national organization is in such a key moment and I am excited to help shape [...]

I recently contributed a piece on 3 Elements of Successful Annual Appeals to BenchmarkEmail’s Presence for Non-Profits blog series.  I hope that you’ll check it out and share your thoughts here or on the BenchmarkEmail site.  In my experience, most annual fund appeals consist either of a letter or a brochure/flyer with a short note [...]

Earlier this month I had the pleasure of attending the Young Nonprofit Professionals Network’s Leaders Conference and  one of the amazing people I met was Renee Bracey Sherman, today’s guest blogger.  She mentioned that she would be attending this amazing conference, so I asked her to share some of what she learned there with you. [...]

While attending a session on Working with Your Board at last month’s Fundraising Day in New York, one of the speakers shared how her organization frames the fundraising expectations of its board: give, get or connect. While most fundraisers are used to the give-or-get concept, but I found it interesting that value was placed on [...]