This article first appeared in Volunteer Victoria’s E-Link newsletter on July 29th , 2011. Sign up for E-Link and keep current with news and information from Volunteer Victoria.

A Question of Accountability

The national media recently turned its attention to charitable spending and highlighted the outcomes of a grading system that measures how Canadian charities of various shapes and sizes use donated funds. The report provides a valuable service, benchmark comparisons, and some important answers and also raised many questions, identified gaps in evaluation methodologies and stakeholder communications, and potentially planted seeds of doubt for donors and stakeholders ...

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The following is a guest blog post written by Kari Frazer, facilitator of our recent “Planning for Fundraising Success” workshop.  Kari holds the international Certified Fund Raising Executive designation and has been practicing fundraising, marketing and media relations for 24 years.

In my recent Planning for Fundraising Success workshop for Volunteer Victoria I think the pivotal subject was creating the The Case for Support. Many of the 30 people in the room had an ‘aha’ moment when we went to some of their websites and looked for evidence ...

[Continue reading Your Case for Support – a critical first step]

We recently held a very successful  ”Story Skills and Telling Tales” day-long workshop, facilitated by Victoria-based storyteller Norma Cameron.  In this post, Norma herself gives readers some resources to turn to while learning how to tell your organization’s stories.

In 2005, after years of being a storyteller and a fundraising/communications consultant, I decided to marry these two pursuits and build more effective communication strategies and tools.  After all, a well-told story is the shortest distance between two people and telling your organization’s story is really no different than the stories we share with each other every day. 

However, it does require a wee bit of work.   ...

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“What’s happening isn’t going to get better – that’s what we all believe. It might even get worse.”

Those were the cautionary words of fundraising expert Judy Lightwater when she gave the workshop, “Fundraising in Challenging Economic Times”, to a group of Volunteer Victoria’s member agencies this past March. She was talking about the state of our economy and the significant impact it has had on the ability of nonprofit agencies to seek out and receive funding from external sources. “You have to be even more concise than you used to be,” Lightwater advised, referring to the way agencies write funding proposals. ...

[Continue reading Fundraising in Challenging Economic Times]