What is the best way to drive innovative work inside organizations? Important clues hide in the stories of world-renowned creators. It turns out that ordinary scientists, marketers, programmers, and other unsung knowledge workers, whose jobs require creative productivity every day, have more in common with famous innovators than most managers realize. The workday events that […]
Read More The Power of Small WinsDid you know that legacy fundraising produces the most ROI (return on investment) of any fundraising activity? Stephen Pidgeon states in his book How To Love Your Donors to Death that the average amount of a bequest in the US is about $37,000. Compare that to the average major gift of $5,000. With that kind […]
Read More Successful Legacy Fundraising | 12 In-depth Insights and TipsWouldn’t it be amazing if you could count on a certain percentage of people in your email list to donate to your organization, and a certain percentage of those donors to become passionate, sustaining members or even board members? Just like traveling through a forest, a guide can show your audience how to move on […]
Read More How to guide your audience to support your missionWith all that’s gone on this year, if you’re still sending generic, organization-centered communication, you’re doing a huge disservice. There has been some conflict about donor-centered vs community-centered, and Ann Green thinks we can have both. What you don’t want is to be organization-centered. You can’t communicate with your donors without focusing on them. This […]
Read More On the Road to Better Donor CommunicationThe CASE-Ross report, released by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE), shows new philanthropic funds secured by UK and Irish highereducation institutions was £1.09 billion during the 2019-2020 reporting year. The new funds secured from philanthropic sources has remained higher than £1 billion for the third year running though average new funds […]
Read More CASE-Ross Support of Education Survey 2021Ilana Jackman worked with Kingston University to talk to 6000 alumni over 60 years old about their legacies and the results have transformed their legacy fundraising. Here is a practical case study how we did it: https://blog.thebiggive.org.uk/advice/as-a-fundraiser-how-can-i-bring-up-the-question-of-legacies/
Read More As a fundraiser, how can I bring up the question of legacies?Are you a cat person or a dog person? The answer to that might impact your choice of a (potential) mate. The experiment on an online dating site randomized the same male in two different photos, one holding a cat, one not. Women then “swiped” to show interest. The guy with the cat was considered […]
Read More Cat People and Dog PeopleYou may know Joan Ogwumike as the author for the past four years of the blog, A Researcher’s Diary, but she is also the writer of the Apra-Illinois blog as well as Prospect Research Associate at the Obama Foundation. Although small in number, Black prospect development professionals deserve an opportunity to share experiences and knowledge pertaining to diversity, inclusion […]
Read More Identity and Blackness in Prospect DevelopmentGenerations of fundraisers and NGOs have been conditioned to a very insidious formula for the way we fundraise. This formula has evolved, it has mutated, but it is still very much alive. Essentially, this formula rests on humanising the donor, and then predominantly the white donor, and on dehumanising the predominantly non-white beneficiaries and more […]
Read More Inclusive communications in the fundraising and philanthropy sectorsEmily Taylor writes about listening – how to do it, why it’s important, and what we can learn from it. For-profits have been listening to their customers for years – tailoring experiences and clearly communicating their offerings in ways that make it easy to understand (think of a Starbucks menu or a Uber Eats delivery […]
Read More Human-centered design, design thinking
