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Mise en Place: The Fundraising Prep You Didn’t Know You Needed
There’s a French phrase that chefs live by: mise en place . It means “everything in its place,” and it refers to the sacred ritual of...
Jul 22, 20254 min read
Rant on Retention Redux (2025 Edition)
It's been 8 years since my last Rant on Retention and we're still talking about some of the same themes. TL;DR - absolutely retention...
Jul 1, 20254 min read
The Philanthropic Multiverse Chapter 2: In Which a Clipboard Becomes a Weapon, Sector W Proves Unstable, and M.A.R.V.I.N. Absolutely Refuses to Run
Welcome to The Fundraiser’s Guide to the Philanthropic Multiverse—a serialized, satirical journey through a world that’s both absurd and...
May 30, 20259 min read
{Tactic} Is Dead; Long Live {Tactic}
We love to declare things dead in fundraising. We've been sounding the death knell of Direct Mail for 30+ years that I know of. Direct...
May 29, 20255 min read
Chapter 1: In Which Miles and Trayer Witness an Arrival, Argue Over a Sandwich, and Discover a Disturbance in the Data Field
Miles Askew was having a perfectly good Tuesday. He’d made it to the Bureau’s outer quadrant undetected. His shirt had only two coffee...
May 27, 20256 min read
Prologue: In Which a Donor Database Collapses Into Itself and Reality Follows
It began, as these things often do, with a PowerPoint. A 128-slide deck, created by the Bureau of Optimization, Revenue, and Development...
May 27, 20253 min read
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