For your reading pleasure – and without changes to last year’s message: The following e-mail message, sent this time every year, has been verified and validated by attorneys and IRS representatives.  A Canadian colleague has repeatedly confirmed the Canadian references.  Of course you should follow whatever institutional policies that have been dictated – although certainly the below might help you address/change old procedures. As a reminder, the IRS released the 2013 allowable benefit (quid pro quo) levels, below which no receipt disclaimer is required, several weeks ago.  You will find that information both in the FundSvcs & Advance-L archives as well as at the download site at www.FundSvcs.org.  In fact you will find copies of what I consider all the relevant IRS forms and publications (some mentioned below) at the same site. With that, here’s the “traditional” Annual Date of Gift message: Annual Date Of Gift Message In the United States the IRS does not…

Our ability to raise money is now tied more than ever to the degree that decision makers can use real time information, trend analysis and appropriate metrics to monitor results and activity to move the organization in the right direction. However, many of us struggle with information delivery and sometimes even the most basic reports and statistics can seem to be lacking in relevancy, depth and breadth. Technical staff struggle with their queues and there never seems to be enough hours in the day to complete simple reports let alone more complex analysis and to find a vision for information needed in the future. New report requests can take days or weeks to complete and are often subject to a lot of iterations. Fundraising is an opportunity driven business and we can be overwhelmed with ad-hoc reporting that is essential to being able to ask those important “what ifs”. Our standard reporting is continually questioned on accuracy and credibility. Consider some of the following questions. Your answers…

As iTunes has replaced FM radio and other sources for listening for music, are we better off now or were we better off with Vinyl and CD’s? When vinyl was king big labels signed artists for 3-5 record contracts and there were 10 to 12 songs per album. When CD’s came out, they were more expensive but were virtually indestructible (no warping and skipping) but artists felt compelled to fill up the CD with up to 20 songs to fill the whole 60 minutes. Were we better off? I traded in all of my vinyl for CD’s and moved on. It seemed like I was acquiring more sounds, they took up less space – but the colder and more precise sound of CD’s was a little different than the warmer sound of vinyl. There are always tradeoffs. With digital music users started sharing. Unit sales dropped, artist royalties and record company revenues plummeted. Early web sites such as MP3.com allowed a grass roots approach to music where artists could post and advertise and set their own price points – without needing signing by the big labels. I moved all my music to my hard drive but still needed CD’s for the car….