I’m going to let you into one of my pet peeves and perhaps, before I’m done, I’ll be picking up Herschel Gordon Lewis’ moniker “Curmudgeon-at-Large.” Really I don’t want to be curmudgeonly but there are things that I’ve run across over the course of more than 30 years raising funds for organizations that I’ve...
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Offer Construction
The World’s Best Kept Secret
You Don’t Have to Lie to Raise Money
Lying in fundraising can certainly be unintentional, or maybe to put it in more generous terms unconscious. Here are a few of the lies we often hear: Sometimes organizations: Overstate the impact of their organization Tell their donors that they can’t do their work without them Create an emergency in order to raise more...
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I’m Puzzled
I can’t remember which teacher early on in my education impressed this on my young mind, but I vividly recall her words: “Once you compose a letter, see how many ‘I’s’ you have, then remove most of them.” She contended the best letters aren’t about the writer but more about a conversation between the...
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