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To a great extent, a major gifts program is a textbook effort in marketing — your objective is to involve your “friends” with your organization, its activities and its mission so they come to want to do what it is you want them to do. Early on, soon after you compiled your list of wealthy […]

Have you ever heard the expression: “You can never be too rich or too thin”? In the case of special events planning, you can never be too organized. Events are critical in providing outreach and exposure for an organization, and some can often be an excellent fundraising and friend-raising tool. It’s easy to make a […]

A nonprofit corporation fails to qualify as a “supporting organization” operated in connection with a public charity when it will provide only $7,900 a year in support of a public charity raising more than $7 million a year in new contributions. The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that contributions of $7,900 to the charity […]

Starting a nonprofit is hard enough. But starting a nonprofit to do international relief and development work presents a unique set of challenges. Just getting it off the ground requires generous amounts of patience, dedication, and creativity. Yet with a little luck and a lot of perseverance, HopeTogether is discovering that the benefits far outweigh […]

What type of activity constitutes a conflict of interest? That’s a question boards regularly ask themselves in order to protect against a real or apparent conflict that could endanger their reputation and support. Is it a conflict of interest if the mother of the executive director of a subsidiary corporation serves on the board of […]

We’ve all heard the old fundraising advice, “solicit inside-out and top-down.” But few campaigns really make full use of this wisdom. There’s more to soliciting inside-out than just putting your regular donors at the top of your mailing list. And there’s more to soliciting from the top down than just putting the biggest givers first. […]