By Rhen Hoehn, Director of Marketing

Catholic nonprofits are quickly realizing that the future of their ministry relies on building a self-sustaining fundraising program.

In a time of shrinking Catholic demographics, relying on your budget to come from an organization like your diocese does n...

By Mary Walker, Petrus Blog Contributor

“If a man has a 100 sheep and one of them goes astray,

will he not leave the 99 in the hills and go in search of the stray?”

(Matthew 18:12)

When the shepherd left the 99 sheep to go after the stray, he had confidence that the ones left behin...

By Rhen Hoehn, Director of Marketing

I'm often asked, “Why would I spend time and money to go meet donors for coffee when I can just send them an email or letter?”

Or, “Wouldn’t it be easier and cheaper to put a little time into grant writing, rather than meeting with people and hoping some o...

By Rhen Hoehn, Director of Marketing

Every so often, it becomes necessary for a nonprofit to abandon their existing donor database system and move to a new one. 

The existing system may be too complicated for staff to use, or perhaps it's not sophisticated enough to keep up with the growing o...

By Rhen Hoehn, Director of Marketing

Have you ever had a donor call and thank you for thanking them so well?

Believe it or not, it does happen. It should be your goal to earn one of those calls this year.

Here is one simple, often-overlooked way to make it happen.

Just One Per Day

Th...

By Rhen Hoehn, Director of Marketing

Setting appropriate goals for a fundraiser can be overwhelming. Fundraisers have many different responsibilities, but they all lead to the same end goal - dollars raised.

Should we boil a fundraiser’s goals down to just the dollars raised for the year?

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...