Linda Lysakowski

Is it important, even necessary, for your Board members to contribute to your organization’s annual appeal?

Yes, for several reasons:  Read more

Many organizations describe themselves as having an annual appeal, but upon further investigation, what the annual appeal consists of may be a letter sent to donors or prospective donors once a year. A strong annual giving appeal consists of far more than just an annual direct mail appeal. For most successful organizations, annual giving may include, personal visits with individual major donors, a corporate appeal, a telephone campaign, Internet fundraising and direct mail.  Read more

If you are bombarded with requests from board and volunteers to add yet another special event to your bag of fundraising tricks, take heed! First of all, you are not alone! Many organizations get caught up in "special event fever" when a board member or other well-meaning volunteer hears about a successful event run by some other organization and decides that your organization should run a similar event. The first thing you should do is help the board to understand that each proposed event has to be closely examined to be sure that the benefits outweigh the costs, including lost opportunity costs. Unless you have a staff whose job it is to implement special events, staff who are supposed to be providing programs and services are diverting their energies to events. If you do have development staff, board members and volunteers need to understand that if the development staff is busy with events, it may keep them from visiting major donors, meeting grant deadlines, etc.  Read more