By Rhen Hoehn, Director of Marketing

As the holidays approach, we often spend time thinking about our resolutions for the coming new year.  We use new year's resolutions to highlight our personal goals and our vision for our individual future.  That said, organizations can also use the start of t...

By Mary Walker, Petrus Blog Contributor

December is the time for the FUN part of FUNdraising! After getting the Christmas/Year-end appeal out,  grab a cup of hot chocolate, sit back, open the mail, and count up the donations! 

I hope you get to do lots of that, BUT there is still work to b...

By Rhen Hoehn, Director of Marketing.  This post first appeared on the Bloomerang blog.

Phone-a-thons have been a tried-and-true fundraising staple for decades. Gather volunteers, have them call a long list of donors, and have them make a solicitation. With fewer people picking up their phone for...

Nobody goes to college to learn how to be a fundraiser. So many times, development professionals tend to end up in the field almost by accident.

Without that educational background, the best practices for raising substantial money for a nonprofit are not always obvious or intuitive.

Many ...

That’s a great question! What do fundraisers do anyway? Meet for coffees at high-end coffee shops, wine and dine prospective donors, rounds of golf on the best golf courses around the world, etc. You name it, I’ve heard it! 

I think a lot of folks think fundraisers are the non-profit’s sleazy us...

By Chris Scroggin, Petrus Consultant

Have you ever wondered what art and science have in common? 

Art draws on emotions.

Science uses rational thought.

But, science and art both demand creativity and excellent observational skills. 

Most techniques used by artists even have interesting scient...

 By Mary Walker, Petrus Blog Contributor

When a ministry starts to look at fundraising in a systematic, and dare I say disciplined way, one of the first steps is to develop a Case for Support, also known as a Case Statement. 

If you are embarking on a capital campaign or want to increase a...

In this episode, Andrew chats with Dr. Scott Grant, pediatrician and creator and host of the Docs2Dads podcast.  Andrew and Scott discuss generosity, and they delve into how we, as parents and family members, cultivate a lifelong spirit of generosity in our children.  They speak specifically about r...

One of the non-profits I worked for didn’t have a database; they had an Excel spreadsheet for their donor information. It wasn’t very organized, and I had no idea how accurate it was. 

There was information everywhere - on spreadsheets, in the executive director’s notebooks, and in the heads ...

In this episode, Andrew interviews Karen Houghton, founder and CEO of Infinite Giving.  Together, Andrew and Karen discuss Infinite Giving’s mission as an investment adviser for nonprofit organizations.  Karen shares her expertise in nonprofit financial management, and she and Andrew discuss ways th...

In this episode, Andrew interviews brothers Tom and Dan Thimons.  Together, Tom and Dan founded My Catholic Will, the only online Catholic will-writing platform.  Andrew invites Tom and Dan to share about My Catholic Will, how they got it started, and what they hope it will become in the future.  Th...

By Rhen Hoehn, Petrus Director of Marketing

Welcome back!  In part one of this two-part series, we discussed three steps that must be taken to position an organization for undertaking a capital campaign.   In this article, we look at three more steps to kick off the process of a campaign.

Th...