Best practice tips for securing municipal funding

Are your local and regional municipal governments supporting your charity? If not, they might just be your top prospects. Based on Inspire's experience planning and executing municipal solicitation, we have distilled the strategy down to ten best practices. Treat your...

Global slump. Grantmaking challenges.

"Many grantmakers have less money to give out. Some have decided they will not give out any grants at all this year. Others are still giving, but less. At the same time there are more charities each year. They need...

Fundraising Q&A: Get your grant proposal past the initial screening process

I want to ensure our grant proposal to a foundation makes it through the initial screening process and gets real consideration. How do I make that happen? Great question! Last month we spoke about getting the "corporate ear"...let's now examine...

Fundraising Q&A: Creating a corporate giving strategy

I'm the executive director of a charity in a small city of about 65,000 people. How do I get local and national businesses to make donations? Unfortunately, what you are asking is often easier said than done. While it's important...

Change-making 101

If you're thinking about launching a social enterprise, you may want to give Tal Dehtiar a call. Having successfully launched MBAs Without Borders (MWB) in 2004 - supporting small businesses in Africa, Asia and Latin America - he recently sold...

In direct mail fundraising letters, don’t ask for the gift!

My wife can still remember the name of her math teacher from grade four. You know why? Because he, um, paused every few words, and ah, ahhhhh, you know, ahh, added an ahh to what he was saying, ah, so...

Municipal-nonprofit partnerships: The future is now

Contemplating entering into partnership with a government body is something that can send shivers down the spines of executive-level staff at nonprofits and charities. Fear of being controlled by bureaucrats, losing your organization's sense of mission, and being beholden to...

The emerging importance of social finance in today’s society

In today’s business world, whether it be a nonprofit or a for-profit organization, there is an abundance of new ways for people to run their organization. There are people that see the need to maximize profit at all cost as...

Governance Q&A: Last minute event changes

If an event is cancelled or greatly scaled back at the last minute, due to circumstances beyond our control, what do we do about our vendors and sponsors? We’ve spent the money they gave us. Once businesses enter into a...

Youth Philanthropy: Hope I give before I get old

Pardon the pun, but there's an age old question asked in almost every era of marketing: how do you capture the imagination, attention and spirit of youth? And for practitioners in the third sector, the question is a burning one,...