Posts Categorized: Uncategorized

With Thanksgiving days away, we were reminded to share with our readers an interesting section recently launched by The Washington Post called “On Giving.” The new section, dubbed, “A conversation on philanthropy and social entrepreneurship,” will cover everything from corporate giving and social responsibility/entrepreneurship to charitable actions and personal finance. It will feature guest contributions from… Read more »

The Curtis Group is pleased to introduce our two new team members, Lauren Fenn and Natalie McGaughey. Lauren, joins us from the development office at Tidewater Community College Educational Foundation. As our new campaign and communications manager she will focus on campaign management, client communications, and marketing the firm. Natalie, a recent graduate of Roanoke College, focused… Read more »

Recently, I conducted a training session at a nonprofit’s board planning retreat. This training was so much fun for me because the board was ready to transition from special events and membership fundraising to a major gift, fundraising-focused program. We talked a lot about culture change as their organization has been using their current model for… Read more »

Here’s another story in our occasional series on how a handful of volunteers can have a huge impact on their community. In 1978, Rev. Edward Page, a young minister at Suffolk Presbyterian Church, was diagnosed with an incurable brain tumor. That same year, Marcus Hogge, a child in Rev. Page’s congregation, was dying from a… Read more »

Part of our email signature is the line, “Celebrating 21 years of work we love.” The dedicated staff and board members at the nonprofits we serve are an important reason why we love what we do. As we enter the season of giving, we’re grateful to be surrounded by so many people who are doing… Read more »

This morning while conducting an interview with a CEO for a campaign planning study, I was reminded of the importance of developing the next generation of fundraisers now. We at The Curtis Group view our overriding role as promoting philanthropy, so we do all we can to help our clients develop their “bench”—their next generation… Read more »

Last week, Keith and I sat in on presentations made to the Hampton Roads Community Foundation by the four Building Excellence grantees from 2009. The grants enabled us to work with these organizations for 18 months, providing them with training and helping them put the infrastructure in place to build development capacity and begin acquiring major… Read more »

Last week at the AFP North Carolina Philanthropy Conference, I went to a workshop called “Giving Across Generations.” A Baby Boomer, Gen-Xer, and Millennial each described what’s important to her in terms of giving priorities and working with nonprofits at this stage of her life. A veteran donor, the Baby Boomer said she’s now interested… Read more »

At the Giving Institute Summer Symposium earlier this month, one topic addressed by a panel of philanthropists was the use outcome measurements in cultivating donors. These philanthropists agreed that while measuring success is important, and major funders expect nonprofits to report outcomes, simply reciting a litany of data that’s important to you isn’t an effective… Read more »

After reading Wendy’s post about endowments last week, I realized that there’s a second part to this issue. Because even if now isn’t the right time for an endowment or other major campaign, that’s not to say you can’t or shouldn’t be cultivating major gifts. At last week’s Giving Institute Summer Symposium, keynote speaker Dr…. Read more »