Finance

11 Best Small Business Insurance Companies for 2026
Continuing from last week’s posting…. As it will not always be appropriate to run down the prepared list of questions with every interviewee, the interviewer must be able to “read people,” must be able to know when to forget the prepared questionnaire and just chat with Mr./Ms. Jones about the NPO’s issues and possible futures. …
Forming an LLC is a smart move to shield your personal assets from business liabilities, but that protection only holds if you keep your finances separate. One of the first and most important steps? Opening a dedicated business bank account. The choices you make early on can have a lasting impact on your business, and …
Tennessee’s vibrant mix of urban centers like Nashville and Memphis, historic small towns, and scenic rural communities means residents need banking solutions as diverse as their lifestyles. Whether you’re a music industry professional, a college student in Knoxville, a retiree in the Smoky Mountains, or a small business owner in Chattanooga, your bank should offer …

More in Finance

In my August 12th posting, I provided a link to a three-part piece on Planning Studies. In that series, I discussed how/why the Planning Study is the best way to determine what programs/activities donors are likely/willing to support, and for identifying which donors will support which program/activity. In a Planning Study you are interviewing people/donors …
There are a number of ways to categorize research on (prospective) donors. One of the obvious ways is by whether or not they are current constituents, another is whether they’ve yet been donors to your organization. For the first category, your research would be focused on identifying groups of people whose interests might suggest that …
Last week’s posting noted that (except for the donor acquisition process) you should not be in the business of cold-solicitation, and that your organization should have done some research on your prospective donors. And, btw, even if someone has given previously, s/he is still, for the purposes of this discussion, a prospective donor. That posting …
Last week the focus was on learning about and understanding what your constituents and potential donors like about you. Now, assuming that you’ve mastered that aspect of the development process, let’s look at what else you need to know about your potential donors; and, what you would have to do to influence those potential donors. …
Fundraising is all about getting your potential donors to want to give to you — if they want to, they will; if they don’t, they won’t !! Too many nonprofit board and staff members don’t understand that little bit of rocket science. Too many board and staff members are focused on “how wonderful the organization …
For this discussion, I refer you to one of my earliest postings, What Is A Major Gift? for a definition of that term, and I add one additional criterion … that it is not a one-time gift “Stewardship,” in the context of development/fundraising, is doing what needs to be done to keep donors feeling good …
As previously noted, if your phone program is primarily a fundraising solicitation tool, then the goal must be to raise as much money as possible. That happens when all of the elements in a phone program support/enhance each other. We’ve talked about caller recruitment, training, scripting and pre-call mail or email. We’ve also talked about …