Have you wondered why some organizations get major gifts all the time while your organization struggles? Do you have trouble even getting in the door? Perhaps you need to first focus on cultivating strong relationships with existing and prospective donors.
This book describes how you can build strong donor relationships through cultivation events. Events where, instead of asking for money or charging people to attend, you focus on the donors' needs, interests, and desires.
Learn from two pros who have run cultivation events for business leaders, individual philanthropists, church members, and other constituencies, that resulted in lasting relationships that led to major gifts.
You will learn who how to identify who to invite to your cultivation events, who should host them, where to hold them, how to plan agendas, how to run the event, and what to do to follow up after the events.
This book will help you solidify relations with existing donors, find new donors and volunteers, gain more community exposure, and, in the long run, raise more money.
Author Biography:
Linda Lysakowski, ACFRE is one of approximately one hundred professionals worldwide to hold the Advanced Certified Fundraising Executive designation. Linda is the author of ten nonfiction books, a contributing author, co-editor, or coauthor of twenty others. She has also written six books unrelated to the nonprofit world. Linda has more than thirty years in the development field. She worked for a university and a museum before starting her own consulting firm. In her twenty-five years as a philanthropic consultant, Linda has managed capital campaigns that have raised more than $50 million, helped hundreds of nonprofit organizations achieve their development goals, and trained more than forty thousand development professionals in most of the fifty states of the United States, Canada, Mexico, Egypt, and Bermuda. She served on the Association of Fundraising Philanthropy (AFP) Foundation for Philanthropy Board and on the Professional Advancement Division for AFP. She is a past president of the Eastern Pennsylvania and Sierra (Nevada) AFP chapters. She received the Outstanding Fundraiser of the Year award from the Eastern Pennsylvania, Las Vegas, and Sierra (Nevada) chapters of AFP, was honored with the Barbara Marion Award for Outstanding Service to AFP and received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Las Vegas AFP chapter. Joanne Oppelt, MHA, principal of Joanne Oppelt Consulting, LLC, is a seasoned rainmaker with a distinguished track record of success. During her twenty-five-plus years working in the nonprofit arena, she built or rebuilt successful fundraising departments at every stop, helping her organizations grow capacity and more effectively fulfill their missions. She has held positions from grant writer to executive director at the nonprofits Community Access Unlimited, Caring Contact: A Listening Community, Family to Family Network of New Jersey, Christian Healthcare Center, March of Dimes Central New Jersey, Prevent Child Abuse New Jersey, and Maternal and Family Health Services. Her extensive background in a variety of work roles and organizations enables her to understand the realities and challenges nonprofit practitioners face-both internally and externally. Her success at every stop positions her to help any nonprofit, whether through her books or consulting practice, turn around its struggling fundraising operations.
