As many of you may know I am the president of APRA.  For those of you who are not familiar with APRA, it stands for the Association for Professional Researchers for Advancement.  I am not only honored to be in this position but I am fortunate to be the president during the 25th anniversary celebration.  [...]

I was working with a client the other day and I was reminded once again that perception plays such a large role in fundraising.  We all carry perceptions of how non-profits work.  If our perception of a non-profit stops at which sector they are in then we are not doing due justice to our donors.  [...]

I remember when I was a researcher it seemed the primary concern was all about the prospect’s assets.  This is obviously a concern and major consideration during the qualification process for major gift prospects.  However I think the biographical background of a prospect is equally important.   After all, I knew my gift officers were not [...]

Team work and effective communication are essential components in ensuring that we reach our fundraising goals as well as our friendraising goals. A major gift that is received of say $1 million is not the work of just a major gift officer or the president of the foundation. It is through the collaborative effort of [...]

I think I have always been involved in some sort of small volunteer role prior to entering the field of fundraising in 1996 but since that time it has played a significant role in my life and I know that it has greatly enhanced not only my life personally but professionally as well.  When I [...]

One of the important things I have learned in being in fundraising is to never assume.  It is very easy to make assumptions about donors, volunteers and staff.  I am not speaking about not trusting your intuition or gut feeling but assuming that someone or a group of individuals knows something.  For instance when I [...]

The tone around real estate since 2008 has not been very positive.  I don’t think there is one of us who has not experienced a decrease in property value whether it is our own property or that of someone we know.  Real estate of course is one of the publically held assets that we use [...]

Like many of you I spent the first quarter of the year getting ready for April 15th.  As I was pulling all my receipts and necessary documents together for my accountant I realized that perhaps it was time to re-think my philanthropic intentions for 2011.  We all remember back in 2008 where donors had to [...]

Well I talked about the easy thing first and that was professional development and now comes the hard one – budgets and goals.  Having spent a large number of years in non-profit, these are never easy items to talk about but obviously so necessary in your day to day work.  As I mentioned in Part [...]

I just recently finished speaking at the CASE District VII Conference and I was thrilled to be asked and like most conferences walked away learning a great deal.   Since most of my fundraising career was based in prospect research and prospect management I tend to look at not only what is the information directly telling [...]