Creating more strategic, financially savvy, and confident nonprofit leaders and organizations.
Predictably, my post last week arguing that nonprofit events aren’t efficient fundraisers caused some controversy. In particular, fundraising consultant, Gayle Gifford and I had an interesting (and very polite) debate about the post. The exchange with Gayle really made me think and further refine my argument (which is really the point of debate, right?). What our exchange […]
I was speaking to a group of nonprofit leaders recently about how to Move from Fundraising to Financing, and when I came to the part about events, the room went predictably quiet. Looks of shock shot around the room. Events are so ubiquitous in the nonprofit sector, how could I possibly say they have little financial value? It […]
I’ve been thinking about using Slideshare, the social media network for presentations and infographics, a lot lately. It’s an amazing site with tremendous content. I wanted to start sharing some of my presentations there. So today, here is my first SlideShare offering, “Calculating the Cost of Fundraising.” These slides are excerpted from my Calculating the […]
Key to any smart nonprofit financing strategy is an analytical approach to focusing on your most profitable activities. Part of this requires calculating the cost of fundraising of every revenue-generating activity your organization engages in. But the more important, and difficult, part is deciding when to stop an activity that doesn’t make financial sense anymore, […]
In part 9 of our ongoing blog series, Financing Not Fundraising, we are discussing the importance of calculating the return on investment of every revenue-generating activity your nonprofit undertakes. This can be fairly easily understood through two basic, but critical analyses: net revenue raised and cost to raise a dollar. If these two calculations were […]
