Fundraising Fundamentals: A Guide to Annual Giving for Professionals and Volunteers

As fundraising books go, this is a pretty good one. I didn't love it because it was kind of dry. But I'm going to throw it a bone with a 5-star because it is packed with content. And I didn't see any inaccuracies in what it talks about. This book concentrates on the methods and techniques nonprofits use to promote annual giving or donations. It's about what nonprofit fundraisers call Annual Giving Programs (AGPs) which help nonprofits finance their annual operating budgets. Other fundraising topics could have been major gift capital and endowment campaigns, and major gift planned giving campaigns. But they were not covered in this book AGPs are the backbone to any nonprofit's fundraising efforts. They are like the sales prospecting efforts that salespeople perform when trying to create a customer or client base for a for-profit venture. It's strictly a numbers game. The more people contacted by the nonprofit month in and month out, then the more likely the nonprofit will find people interested in giving a little to the nonprofit. In sales one tries to build rapport with prospects and turn them into candidates or buyers. As a relationship develops between a salesperson and a prospect, the more likely the prospect is to become a buyer. And once a buyer buys once, then they are more likely to buy again and again as long as the salesperson does not trash the relationship that has developed. Well, the process followed in AGPs works the same way. In this book the author explains that nonprofits hit the donor prospects with direct mail pieces. When a recipient nibbles, then they follow up with a request for a small donation while at the same time attempting to build rapport with them. Over the next year a few more contacts are made to further build rapport and start a relationship. As the relationship evolves (if it does), then the donor ends up giving more and more gifts as time goes on. Ultimately, over many years the nonprofit has such a well-developed database of donors that it starts hitting on them for major gifts (over $10,000) and planned gifts (over $10,000) as part of its AGP. Besides direct mail which the author explains very well in this book, AGPs in their second year or later use telephone and telemarketing, and email and Web sites, to the mix of methods to move a first time giver into being a second time giver and more. There are also membership drives, activities, and special events that represent yet other ways nonprofits build robust databases of donors that support them. Whether or not direct mail is ever used by a nonprofit for fundraising, just about all nonprofits seek sponsorships from corporations and grants from foundations as part of their AGPs. And smart nonprofits also take advantage of publicity and public relations efforts to attract donors. Some resort to advertising, but this is not the norm. My favorite part of the book was Chapter 13 that gave a wonderful overview of how to manage a comprehensive AGP. The book is

Fundraising Fundamentals by James Greenfield has been around for some time, and I have used it as a trusted resource time and again. This new edition is even better than the first. There are new sections covering telephone/telemarketing sklls, corporate solicitation, and the internet (this is particularly useful). There are also plenty of case studies and examples to help readers learn to implement the guidance Greenfield provides in their own nonprofit. Whatever your experience/skill level in your nonprofit, this is the one resource you should not do without!