What Book Has Changed Your (Professional) Life?

Recently Nancy Schwartz asked this question on her blog and as part of the Nonprofit Blog Carnival and after a few twitter dm’s, she convinced me to write about my selection. This tough because I am more of a marketing fellow than a fundraiser like Jen, so I tend to read a lot of both. [...]

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Not a buzzword

If, and this is a very big if, if I wore a bonnet, I’d have a bee in it. A few weeks ago I asked a question on Linkedin, “Simple question today: when i say “donor centered” – what charity, agency or consultant do you think of ” The results were interesting and insightful and [...]

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Adventures in Election Direct Mail

I wasn’t sure if I was going to blog about the election. Because the content sucks. I watched the debate. Boring, entitled white guy backpedals and blames the other guy. I follow the candidates on Twitter. Broadcast, broadcast, broadcast. But now the election is coming into my mailbox. You’re on my turf now. I could [...]

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Dear Donors

The best blog posts are the ones you don’t need to write yourself. They are even better when they are written by someone who you admire and look to as a gut check and reminder that what you do every day, you are doing right. Today’s post comes via Tom Ahern – and if you [...]

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Ten things we’ve learned from being Agents of Good

Our great pal and uber-passionate fundraiser, Josh Bowman who works along side the great folks at Second Harvest in Toronto has the market covered in Top Ten lists on his blog. This month he has been posting Top Ten lists from some of other favourite friends, bloggers and colleagues and we are honoured to be [...]

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I just got a call…

I just got a call. And here you are reading my blog about it. You’re going to hear my venting. But if you can hang on through the rage, you’ll also hopefully think about how you talk to your donors/communities of supporters. Phone rings. Me: “hello?” Pause. Clicking. Some kind of murmuring. Me: “hello!?” Murmur [...]

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RE: Fightin’ Words!

Here we go. Nothing like waking up and over your morning coffee, tucking into a blog post that instantly makes your blood boil. In case you doing want to read The Agitator article, let me nutshell it for you. Wikipedia is in the midst of conducting its annual fundraising campaign – which has been collaboratively [...]

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Direct Mail Stupidity

I promise this will be the last time I rant for a while. My darling wife questions my sanity when I get so upset over something as innocuous (at times) as direct mail. But I’m sorry, I can’t help it. When charities and consultants start treating donors all the same, without thought, appreciation, like a [...]

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Mad as hell

The Canadian charitable sector has been a buzz for the past week by CBC’s report about fundraisers spending excessive amounts of coin on – GASP – professional fundraisers. As you probably know, AFP, Imagine Canada, Agents of Good, and – well heck – almost EVERYONE, has written a post or letter explaining why CBC’s shoddy [...]

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F*ck you and, uh, f*ck them too

Over the past five years, external fundraisers in Canada have taken in more than $750 million – CBC Investigates Your Charity Dollars. You know it’s fall in Canada when the news media jacks up coverage of how much money charities spend on fundraising. They eviscerate charities — and their agencies — who spend almost as [...]

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