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Insights: A Deep Dive Into Grants and Nonprofit Funding

Nominate Your Donors and Volunteers

A great way to cultivate major donors is to nominate them for as many awards or recognition as you can.  The accolades might be given by your organization, but usually, your community will have lot...

OUCH! A Sad Case of What NOT to Do...

It is a challenge to share some stories gracefully, but it is worth noting that when things go awry, we can learn from the mistakes of others before we make our own. Unfortunately, we have a story ...

In light of recent events...Thank You

We normally provide grant and fundraising tips and insights every other week. We are due to share a blog post to provide such tips and insights this week. However, as every nonprofit and public-ser...

Keeping the 5 in Mind

I am currently having a lot of fun doing a consultancy for a great community college. My 11 years at UNC Asheville are very beneficial – college campuses share a lot of the same politics and challe...

What a Wild Ride!

The first quarter of 2017 was a wild ride to say the least. We were expecting a major grant competition to open any minute, one that only comes around every 3 years. I essentially built my professi...

Compensation

By: Alex Comfort, CFRE “I Could Make More Money Doing Something Else” One of my current clients is a community college that has a wonderful program. I spoke to an “Interim Dean” today and he said t...

Outline Project Costs Before Writing Grant Proposal

A grant budget doesn’t have to be a mysterious or scary thing. It’s all about outlining program costs early in the planning period, having the right people on board, and knowing for what you can re...

HOW MANY SPECIAL EVENTS CAN YOU PUT ON THE HEAD OF A PIN?

Alex Comfort, CFRE After two years of teaching my “Fundraising Boot Camp,” a new class had a member who said early on: “We have all heard that you hate special events.”  That was the moment I reali...

ATTENTION MailChimp Users! Your email marketing just turned awesome.

On May 2nd, MailChimp made an incredible announcement, “powerful marketing automation features are now free for all MailChimp users!” This is great news, especially for nonprofits that may already ...

No One Belongs Under the Bus

Kutools Review & Tips

Remember a few months ago when we had a new toy to try and we were super excited about it? Well, we gave it a test drive and it purred like a kitten! (Well, to the extent a file organization system...

Credibility (Pt. 2 of 4) – Follow up to the Uncle Sam Analogy

Work Together to Build Credibility Necessary for Successful Grants   Does it seem like the same established nonprofits are always the organizations that are awarded grants? That’s because it is. Th...

Have a Seat on the Other Side of the Table!

One of the best professional development opportunities for grant writers is to serve as a peer reviewer, reading and scoring competitive grant proposals. It is extremely helpful to see the back-end...

Thinking About Training…

Alex Comfort, CFRE I just finished an AFP chapter meeting in which I moderated, in part, a discussion of ethics.  The best part of this was a panel on which I served that fielded ethics problems th...

The Uncle Sam Analogy (Pt. 1 of 4)

Our dear old Uncle Sam has a fistful of one hundred dollar bills. He lines up five of his nieces and nephews along a wall.  “Alright,” he says. “I’ve got a fistful of cash. I’ll give it to whoever ...

Ways Your Board Members Can Assist You with Fundraising

Alex Comfort, CFRE Anyone who is a non-profit professional understands the challenge of getting Board Members to grasp fully their fiduciary responsibility:  they are to help raise the funding for ...

Dark Clouds in the Crystal Ball

A few short weeks ago, I wrote about the new administration in a reserved, but hopeful manner. While our crystal ball for grant funding was pretty cloudy, I remained cautiously optimistic. Since th...

Thoughts About the Annual Fund

Alex Comfort, CFRE What great nuggets stay in your brain from college?  One for me came from THE GREAT LITERATURE PROFESSOR. You know, the one you had to take even though he was so hard your grade ...

Don’t forget direct mail!

Alex Comfort, CFRE Recently I convened a group of 6 fundraisers who held a position of “Director of Development” or some title like that.  Four were fairly new to the profession, and two were exper...

BREAKING NEWS!!

We have just received word from the Tennessee Department of Education that they plan to release the RFP for the next Lottery for Education Afterschool Programs (LEAPs) and 21st Century Community Le...