News/Blog

In order to govern effectively nonprofit Boards must work collaboratively with development staff and major donors. The most challenging task of CEO’s and fundraising leadership is motivating and supporting their Board in its most important responsibilities: finance, planning for growth, acting as advocates, dealing with crisis and change, evaluating its performance, and ensuring the nonprofit has the resources to fulfill its mission. Review the following strategies and ideas for transforming your board into a dynamic leadership team.

friends, meet new ones who share a passion for improving the world via philanthropy, be reminded about some best practices I’d forgotten and be exposed to lots of new ideas and approaches.  It was good for my brain.  More importantly, it was good for my spirit.

Qualities vs. Experience

I recently attended a CASE (Council for the Advancement and Support of Education) conference and there was no shortage of development department leaders saying they are spending more and more of their time in interviewing and holding searches for open positions, in particular front line fundraisers.  These conversations gave me pause to think about how many hours I spent in hiring new staff. I thought about how many times I was right-on in my choices and when I realized I didn’t make the best choice. 

AFP-NYC Educational Program Recap

As we head into spring, many a development director (and their boards!) may be turning attention to thoughts of a new campaign.  It could be a large, multi-year capital campaign or a smaller, but critical, annual fund campaign.  Regardless, behind every fundraising campaign, the key factors to success are lots of research, planning, and… internal persuasion(!).

Juliana M. Weissbein, Associate Director of Development Operations at Planned Parenthood Federation of America and AFP-NYC Emerging Leaders Committee Chair, was recently named AFP's 2019 Outstanding Young Professional and will accept her award at AFP ICON later this month. We sat down with her to learn more about her career in the fundraising industry.

Insight from the "30 Ways to Love Your Donors" Event held on February 14, 2019. 

One of the most powerful methods of connecting donors to your organization is though expressing heartfelt gratitude for their generosity. Your nonprofit’s relationship with a donor begins with the very first gift. If you value your supporters and wish to retain them, it is vital that your nonprofit commit to an ongoing stewardship program. The strategies listed below will go a long way in motivating donors to maintain and increase their giving. 

I have been giving a lot of thought to team-building lately. I am just over 90 days into a new job and so building my formal and informal teams has been especially important to me. I work for an acute-care community hospital that depends on strong and effective teams to fulfill our mission. Because of the critical importance of coordination and communication between the teams that are providing care to our patients, 24 hours a day and 365 days a year, and the host of details they manage critical to patient care and safety, the team-work process is systematized and is constantly being evaluated and refined.

AFP-NYC’s job board has been a hugely popular resource for people seeking to hire fundraising professionals in New York City for almost ten years. As popular as it is, there is always room for improvement. And today we are very happy to announce the launch of the new AFP-NYC Career Center, an upgrade that dramatically improves functionality for employers and recruiters AND brings a host of new services to job seekers as well. 

The recent Inside Philanthropy article “Ambitious and Risk Taking.” Explaining The Shed’s Startling Fundraising Success got me thinking about the elements of effective fundraising and if the success of the new cultural center’s fundraising was truly, “startling.”