Best of...

When I relaunched this blog, I got a new design and new CMS. I kicked up my blogging and started writing a lot more. I also revisited all the stuff I’d written over the last four years.

I found some great stuff and figured it was worth dusting these posts off and bringing them to the surface again.

Strategic Planning

Planning your strategic planning
A sample strategic planning schedule

Strategic Planning Glossary
Defining the terms for your strategic planning

4 strategic planning team exercises
Includes ideas on how to get your board and planning committees thinking

Strategic planning SWOT analysis toolkit
A SWOT is a great tool and it’s easy and fun to do

Starting a new strategic plan
Like exercise, diet, or financial plans, sometimes just getting started is the hardest part

Fundraising and Marketing

A mailbox isn’t a lonely place
A look at newsletter DOs and DON’Ts

Donors are people too
A crucial lesson for appealing to donors

How to lose money on fundraising events
When it cost me more to host an event than we ended up making

What all those fundraising books, blogs, and seminars don’t tell you
Most notably, “get off your ass and do stuff”

From the expert: top 10 fundraising tips
Great advice from someone who’s made a career out of it

Fundraising from the marketing department
My realization that marketing and fundraising aren’t that different

7 tips for a more profitable silent auction
Having run good and bad silent auctions, here are some of my favorite tips

Aggressive fundraising, transparency, and the worst-case scenario
Learn from my biggest mistakes before you make them yourself

How to track if your marketing tactics are effective
In which I show how we tracked responses to our billboards, postcards, and yard signs

Why you should ignore mobile giving
This post ticked off a few mobile (SMS) giving vendors, which makes me love it all the more

New research on why people donate
Actual research on motivations for giving money

Leadership

How to stop negativity in your organization
Formerly the resident “black cloud,” I had to learn the art of optimism

The Minister of Gratitude
A job description for someone who does nothing but thank people

Non-profit manifesto
Things I believe about non-profit life

Recruiting Generation Y to give and get involved
Tapping into a generation of future donors, volunteers, and leaders

7 signs you’re a great board member
I think you recognize it when you see it, but maybe we should remind our boards sometimes

A leader’s note to the future
How will your successors view your contributions?

Top 4 policies you need
Exciting, right? Yet there’s a reason policies exist

Advice for non-profit newbies
Three tips for success in the non-profit world

New leader’s guide to board management
Advice to a new board president on my way out the door

12 lessons from client service
How non-profits can learn from client-service professionals