January 2025 Tips

Welcome to your Clairification Dashboard and Monthly Tips! You’ll find something new here each month — paralleling what you’re likely thinking about during this time period. Consider these tips your New Year’s Resolutions. They’re simple to accomplish, relatively inexpensive, and they’ll give your fundraising program a big boost in the coming year. As the folks at…

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December 2024 Tips

Welcome to your Clairification Dashboard and Monthly Tips! You’ll find something new here each month — paralleling what you’re likely thinking about during this time period. This month I’m giving you multiple tips because, heck, it’s a very critical month for fundraisers! Studies show one-fourth of all charitable giving happens in December. For some organizations (maybe…

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November Tips 2024

Why not declare November ‘Gratitude for Blessings’ month? This means finding opportunities to demonstrate gratitude. Let me begin with how grateful I am for you, my readers. Whereas donors are the center of your nonprofit’s universe, you are the center of mine. You are the reason I write.  When I can’t share my ideas, it’s…

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October 2024 Tips

This is the time of year you need to start seriously ASKING for gifts. Chanel the famous hockey player Wayne Gretsky who said “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” Add to that the urgency of the NOW. The end of the calendar year is when most nonprofits raise the bulk of their…

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September 2024

This month I have several unrelated tips for you. Each of them will help you enormously. Want a simple yet powerful strategy to build your monthly giving program? It begins with your thank you. It’s something I learned from monthly giving expert Ronald Pruitt of 4aGoodCause. It’s a tip for using e to get donors…

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August 2024 Tips

I really don’t want you to ignore the power of legacy giving, even if you don’t currently have a formal program. Because there are a few simple things you can do to assure folks know you welcome these kinds of gifts. And you don’t need to get fancy. Let me share a question I received…

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July 2024 Tips

It’s not too early to begin planning your fundraising strategies for the fall and end of the calendar year.  You’re probably already thinking about your appeal.  But what about person-to-person major gift fundraising? For most nonprofits, the lion’s share of money comes from the smallest group of people. Many of these folks respond well…

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June 2024 Tips

For many of you this is your fiscal year end.  That means making sure you don’t lose any of those donors you to such pains to acquire last year. It also means tying up loose ends to assure you don’t leave money on the table. For those of you on a different fiscal year, skip…

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May 2024 Tips

Now is the time to assure you’ve got a manageable plan in place so you’re ready for prime fundraising season next Fall. This month’s tips are designed to help you figure out how to prioritize and manage everything on your plate. A task management system may help a little. Here’s one some of my clients use…

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April Tips 2024

What better time than spring (at least in the northern hemisphere) to focus on the same cycle of renewal that many parts of the earth go through? This is a good time of year to focus on reactivating lapsed donors. The point is you have to plant the seeds and water the plants before your…

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