Guiding Vision

The question of who to ask for donations comes up all the time. The psychological motivation behind the question is often a lack of comfort with asking. No one likes to hear the word “no!” So we’d like to be assured that the prospect will most likely say yes, or we don’t want to ask at all. Or better yet, the donor would suggest a donation or just send a check. That would make asking much easier. (more…)

Yesterday I did a teleseminar with Chris Brisson of RaffleSecrets.com. We’d asked website visitors to submit their questions ahead of time and got a lot of great questions. It was really an interesting conversation with Chris and I both adding our own lessons for success from our experiences. Now the recording is available for those who didn’t get to listen in to the call.

One of the reasons that I like raffles is that if all of the prizes are donated then nearly all of the profit goes toward the cause. Of course a lot of people want to get the “big prize” i.e. cars, houses, etc. but often those can be difficult to really make money on because the prize is usually not donated. Organizations can get into some liability issues that they hadn’t anticipated. Chris and I discussed some ways to plan ahead of time to be prepared for such issues. (more…)

Since October 2003 I’ve been connecting schools and non profit groups with effective fundraising strategies through my website Step by Step Fundraising.

For I long time I ran the site as a part-time project, and then in May 2004 devoted myself full-time to this endeavor.

The Step by Step site was created out of my experience fundraising for charities as part of walk-a-thon and other events. I’ve completed a marathon, half marathon and several 5Ks for a variety of charities. So the site was originally to help people who were also charity run/walk event enthusiasts. There’s still a section of the website devoted to charity walkers & runners and alot of people find the site because of this focus. (more…)

I’ve been blogging since 2004…personal blogs, exercise journals, etc. even my Step by Step Fundraising site is published on Wordpress.  But I finally decided I needed a space devoted to blogging about fundraising from a more personal perspective, outside of my business.

I’m posting a few articles that I published elsewhere over the years, dated with the approximate date of original publication when appropriate.  I’ll be writing a little more “insider type information here than is normally on Step by Step.  I’m sure I’ll also include some non-fundraising topics as well, about my career, activism and causes I’m personally involved with.  Hopefully these perspectives will be of use to someone besides myself.