Fundraising and communications: One hat or two?

The relationship between communications and fundraising in many organizations is a strained one. The friction arises over a variety of things: resources, turf, approvals, competing plans, different visions. The question many organizations are asking is whether fundraising and communications should...

Crowds: What are they good for?

Still sloughing off the effects of their 2008 banking meltdown, Iceland was in the news again recently when its government decided to amend their constitution by way of suggestions posted by citizens on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Otherwise known as...

Fundraising Q&A: Asking a friend for a major gift

A close friend of mine frequently makes significant gifts to her favourite causes. I sit on the board of a charity; how do I get her to support mine? Ask and you shall receive is a good place to start!...

Great Northern Arts Festival

Last month in our series about summer arts festivals run by nonprofits, we looked at the partnership between Toronto’s Luminato festival and The New Yorker Magazine. This month, we head way up north, to the town of Inuvik on the...

Fundraising Q&A: Summer activities to strengthen your fundraising program

What should my charity focus on over the summer to strengthen our fundraising program? July and August are good months to refocus your fundraising strategy so you can hit the ground running come the autumn. While June is often taken...

Funders support and seek out co-location models

Marilyn Struthers, province-wide program manager for the Ontario Trillium Foundation, speaks largely in nature metaphors. "I sit at the top of the high tree overlooking the sector," she says of her job overseeing millions of dollars of grant applications each...

New results from the 2011 International Gift Planning Survey

In October 2010, CharityVillage® and Give Green Canada jointly launched a survey to gather information about a subject in dire need of more data: bequest opportunities for the international charitable sector. More than nine hundred people partook in the survey,...

Furthering the arts with strategic partnerships: Luminato and The New Yorker magazine

Summer's here, and as the song says, the time is right for dancing in the streets. It's also right for just about every other type of creative endeavour, and that's because the arts-festival season is kicking into high gear. This...

Connecting with the wired wealthy

There's an attitude out there that online fundraising hasn't quite arrived yet in Canada. Almost every nonprofit does it, but most just don't devote much in the way of time or resources to it. I have met many traditional fundraisers...

Why run when you can walk? The evolution of walkathons

In 1953, Ramón Rivero took to the streets in Puerto Rico. As the main participant and organizer for the first-known walkathon, Rivero walked 80 miles from San Juan to Ponce and raised the equivalent of $85,000 for the Puerto Rican...