Last week I had the good fortune of attending a summer conference in Boston hosted by the Giving Institute, the organization behind Giving USA. It was an outstanding experience! The speakers were one-of-a-kind and the content was entertaining, weighty and meaningful. I was excited to meet other advisors to the nonprofit sector and talk shop: how to stay current and keep improving our services to drive innovation and real change in communities…

We have to admit, we weren’t expecting much “new” in the 2014 Giving USA numbers released last week. But then we reviewed them and listened to the analysis. And it was pretty exciting to see that young donors and a recovering economy are directly impacting the nonprofit world. We’ve boiled these trends down into four key points that every mission can put to use…

Capital campaigns. You love ‘em and you hate ‘em. This is because few other fundraising endeavors are capable of eliciting excitement and a little fear at the same time. For fundraising professionals, running a successful capital campaign is like competing in the Ironman Triathlon…

Like many people, I receive all kinds of requests for donations in the mail. And there are certain ones, mostly local, that I support every year with a gift of $25 or $50. When tax season rolled around this year, I tallied up my various donations from the previous year and was surprised by how much I’d actually contributed without feeling like I’d done anything important…