Future Fundraising Now

Category: Fundraising

  • What AI might mean for consultants and freelancers

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    Jeff Brooks
    in

    I wrote a large (and, we hoped, financially pivotal) project for a client. There were going to be a lot of eyes on my work. We knew that. It would include uninformed board members and people from departments not normally involved in (or held accountable for) fundraising. It was going to be a challenge. Then…

  • Top 5 blog posts of the month

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    Jeff Brooks
    in

    Here are the 5 most-read Future Fundraising Now blog posts of the month of August: Looking for some really good (and specific) advice for your fundraising? Book a FREE consultation with Sean Triner of Moceanic. Sean knows his stuff, and can help you find your way forward.

  • 7 things to worry about when you use AI in fundraising

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    Jeff Brooks
    in

    You can’t really avoid AI. Even if you completely boycott it, people around you are using it. It has meaningful downsides. Here are some issues you should be aware of. None of them have anything to do specifically with fundraising. I don’t have answers for any of these things. Maybe they’re inevitable. But we should…

  • 5 donor-friendly ways to raise unrestricted funds

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    Jeff Brooks
    in

    If you haven’t already noticed this, you will eventually: Donors are way more likely to give to do something specific than to give you money to keep your organization going. Problem is, you really need unrestricted funds. To do all the boring stuff like keep the lights on and fix the copier — the stuff…

  • Stupid AI tricks you need to stay aware of

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    Jeff Brooks
    in

    The best AI tool is not intelligent. It’s not conscious. It doesn’t “know” anything. It mimics those things by seeing patterns and spitting them back. That’s all. It does that at incredible speed, and it finds and spits back patterns of mind-boggling complexity. But there’s no intelligence involved. That’s why AI makes bafflingly stupid mistakes.…

  • “Not you, me” fundraising

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    Jeff Brooks
    in

    Two of my nephews are close-in-age brothers. That means they fought. A lot. As brothers do. When they were little guys, maybe 4 and 5 (they’re adults now), the younger brother went through a stage where he’d taunt his brother by saying, Not you, me! Meaning, I guess, “I’m better, it’s mine, you are less…

  • 4+ tips for using AI to build your fundraising

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    Jeff Brooks
    in

    Hello, AI Tool. Please write a direct mail appeal for our organization. If you use AI like that, you will get a powerful demonstration of the old adage, Garbage in, garbage out. Which is exactly what’s happening in some parts of the fundraising world. More and more and more garbage. You don’t have to do…

  • Getting the most out of survey research [PODCAST]

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    Jeff Brooks
    in

    Survey research can lead your fundraising badly astray. Focus groups can kill the strongest fundraising programs. If you use them wrongly. There are great ways to use qualitative research to best your knowledge and inform your strategies. Find out some of the pitfalls as well as the gold nuggets of surveys and focus groups. From…

  • Top 5 blog posts of the month

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    by

    Jeff Brooks
    in

    Here are the 5 most-read Future Fundraising Now blog posts of the month of July: Looking for some really good (and specific) advice for your fundraising? Book a FREE consultation with Sean Triner of Moceanic. Sean knows his stuff, and can help you find your way forward.

  • 3 times you should not ask donors for money

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    Jeff Brooks
    in

    When should you not ask a donor to give? It’s an important question, because not asking is the most effective way there is to not receive. But there are times when not asking is the right thing to do. I can think of three specific situations when it’s better not to ask than to ask:…