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Apr 29, 2024

Top Mistakes: #2 Not Mailing Major Donors

I have been analyzing the fundraising business for nearly three decades and over the years I keep seeing nonprofit organizations making the same mistakes. These errors hold organizations back.

If you are new to fundraising, please commit yourself to avoiding these five errors. Your organization probably won’t thank you. But you and I will both know that you are secretly saving your organization.

Number 2: Not Mailing Major Donors.

Organizations have this belief they need to “protect” their best donors from receiving their direct mail appeals. So, major donors are regularly given “no-mail” flags on their accounts.

Now, the intent is noble: “We have a Major Gift Officer assigned to cultivate a one-to-one relationship with that donor and we don’t want that junk mail interfering with that.”

But what I have seen far too often is this: For one reason or another (usually due to MGO turnover) the organization fails to cultivate a one-to-one relationship and that donor is forgotten and receives zero communication with the organization . . . and thus never sends in another check.

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Again and again. Over and over.

So, if I may suggest, allow your major donors to receive your direct mail appeals. The risk is far too great not to.

Part VII: How Analytical Ones Will be Using AI

Over the past couple of weeks, I have written about some potential effects that AI will have on the nonprofit sector. Today, I’m going to end this series on how we as a company intend to use AI. There’s no doubt there is a certain “wow-factor” using AI. It’s like Star...

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Part VI: The Environmental Impact of AI

Up to this point in our AI blog series, I have been discussing (some might say ragging on) the practical implementational challenges of AI in the nonprofit sector. In today’s blog, I’m shifting the focus on a more global issue: Is using AI environmentally sustainable?...

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