Purpose of this Fundraising Blog
This blog is intended to help you better understand the philosophy/concepts of fundraising and suggest how you might enhance your fundraising efforts. It will provide mini-articles, opinions and commentary — and occasionally a suggestion that could make your fundraising easier and/or more productive. It will, when consistent with its basic purposes, also address your comments and answer your questions.
This blog is for a general audience, from fundraising novices and those who hate the thought that they might have to ask someone for money, to those with extensive experience. For the former, this blog is intended to be educational … and maybe therapeutic, for the latter we hope to stimulate discussion/debate.
The benefits of well thought-out, well designed fundraising programs are many, including that they:
- Raise more money, in less time, at a lower cost.
- Make staff, board members and other volunteers more comfortable with the fundraising process, and more willing to be involved.
- Build relationships with current and future donors.
- Allow continuation/enhancement/expansion of programs that serve the community.
- Enhance a non-profit’s credibility.
Examples of Topics (or Categories) Relevant to this Blog
You can understand even more about the focus of this blog from the following list of topics (or categories) that this blog might address. As we blog along, there will likely be other categories (and sub-categories) added to this list:
- Fundraising basics — the essential concepts of fundraising
- The relationship between fundraising and development
- The various roles, in the fundraising process, of staff, board and other volunteers
- Major gift and bequest programs
- Fundraising/Planning Studies
- Capital campaigns
- Grant writing and relationships with grantors
- Special events
- Our fundraising pet peeves
As posts are published, they will be organized into those or other related categories. Categories that have posts published to them will be listed in the sidebar in Categories of Posts. Readers can click on a category and see the posts in that category.
About Me, the Host of this Blog
I’m Hank Lewis and I’m the host of this blog. You can read more about me next to my picture in the sidebar. This blog will be about various aspects of fundraising, from broad concepts to practical tips, and will include posts from guest writers.
How to Use the Library’s Blogs
We have implemented many features to make the blogs very valuable and convenient to use. To learn how to use the blogs, click on Library Blog’s Home under the header on each page of the blog.
If You’re Interested In Hosting a Blog for the Library
Just click on Contact Us at the bottom of each page and share your idea, including the topic that you would like to blog about. You would need to commit to publishing a post at least twice a week for at least six months. In return, you would get tremendous visibility to you and your writing. You would retain copyright of your writing – see the Copyright in the footer on each page.
Welcome!