An anonymous letter to a nonprofit board member on how to fundraise

Marc A. Pitman, FundraisingCoach.com

This month’s Nonprofit Blog Carnival involves writing an anonymous letter to your board. Anything was fair game. Here is my letter. An anonymous letter to a nonprofit board member Dear Jane, Thank you. Thank you so much for giving your time and money to make our world a better place by your work here. You [...]

[Guest Post] Helping board members maximize fundraising effort

Headshot Peter Genuardi - Strength in Members on maximizing board member fundraising efforts

Peter Genuardi & I are fellow bloggers for npENGAGE. I finally met him at NTEN’s annual conference a couple months ago. He’s the Founder & CEO of Strenth in Members. He helps organizations build better relationships with their supporters by finding social influencers on their email file and driving them engagement and conversion offers through [...]

Free fundraising tips and ideas in 3 podcasts!

Image of headphones for Free fundraising tips and ideas in 3 podcasts!

In the past week, I was privileged to be the guest on three terrific podcasts! In each I was asked various aspects of fundraising. Ted Hart’s Nonprofit Radio On Ted’s show, about 15-20 minutes in, we talked about Ask Without Fear! and the ins and outs of major gift fundraising. You can listen in at: [...]

Self talk, body chemistry, and being successful at fundraising

Image of a whisper to symbolize your brain talking to you - Self talk, body chemistry, and successful fundraising

What we say to ourselves can sink our fundraising program. He’s probably not interested. I’m probably bugging her. They get “hit” by everyone so they won’t want to talk to me. When we say things like that, we think we’re being “honest” or “realistic.” But we’re actually creating a self-fulfilling prophesy. These thoughts often physically [...]

Fundraising for ministry support

Marc Pitman Fundraising Coach giving a series of lectures at the castle at Glen Eyrie

A couple weeks ago, I gave a series of lectures at the Funding Your Ministry Symposium to over 100 coaches from around the world. These people represented 48 different missionary associations including large organizations like The Navigators, InterVarsity, Cru, YWAM, and Wycliffe. The people they coach are raising their own ministry support. They don’t have [...]

Throw statistics out of your fundraising letters!

These are the words that matter to us as fundraisers

A couple weeks ago, I was grounded in Newark, NJ so I got to listen to some NJ radio. One ad for a nonprofit caught my attention and then quickly failed. I blogged about it at Does the phrase “tax deductible” kill donations? And I gave some suggestions on how the ad could’ve gotten me [...]

21 Social Media Tips for Nonprofits from Top Experts

21 Social Media Tips for Nonprofits from Top Experts

I love nonprofits. And I love social media. But nonprofits don’t always “get” social media. While there are few truly firm rules about using Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, or any of the other myriad of platforms out there, there are some things that bug donors. So I emailed some of the top authors and social [...]