Fund-of-funds Books

~Political Sermons of the American Founding Era: 1730-1805~ is an excellent source of political sermons from the American colonial and founding era. Themes cover everything from the Biblically-ordained role of civil authorities to patriotism to the dangers of prosperity to the sovereignty of God. Sermons in this anthology feature a cross-section of early American Christian denominations: including Congregationalist Puritans, Baptists, and High Anglicans like James Madison. Samuel Langdon's Sermon on the "Republic of the Israelites, An Example" is particularly intriguing and no doubt inspirational to all who heard his message. Issac Backus was a New England Baptist who also made an impassioned plea for religious liberties in 1773, echoing a theme of the founders that religion is the duty we owe are creator. John Adams once avowed our Constitution was for a religious and moral people. The reality that virtue is a prerequisite for a Republic is often forgotten. Most of the founding fathers believed that virtue was to be found in the tenets of Christianity. James Madison said it best, "We have staked the whole future of American civilization, not upon the power of government, far from it. We have staked the future of all of our political institutions upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God."

I am a student of history working on my thesis and have found this book to be very benifical to my work. This is due to the fact that all the important and or useful sermons are in the book and makes my job so much easier.

Bancel lays out the information an aorganization needs in order to have a successful campaign. Before the case statement, before the quiest phase, even before the vote to have a campaign, Bancel focuses on the people, donors, staff and budget you need.
A worthwhile book. Get it.

Ms. Bancel does an amazing job of leading the novice -- or even the not-so-novice -- fundraiser through a step-by-step process of preparing for that daunting event that every successful non-profit must eventually face: the capital campaign. Few books of this type are as pragmatic, and none have the carefully crafted, detailed "how-to" advice that Ms. Bancel provides...

This book helped me to write a federal grant application. I enjoyed the easy-to-read style! I expecially liked the sample goals and objectives and the evaluation section.

The book is an easy to follow guide to proposal writing. It's small and not intimidating. It's also easy to read. As a first time grant writer, I found it useful and plan on keeping it for future grants. Definitely recommend for first time grant writers.

Use this guide to evaluate and improve your fundraising. The handy checklists cover getting support from government agencies, foundations, corporations, planned gifts, direct mail, and special events.
Ideal for Board Members and Management use before launching a development campaign.

This workbook is aimed at the leader of a nonprofit organization that is raising funds or plans to engage in fundraising. I read it from the perspective of a board member for a nonprofit that desperately needs to raise more funds, and I found it very helpful. I recommended that our executive director get and use this workbook.

The workbook is jointly sponsored by the Center for Philanthropy at Indiana University and the Department of Public Administration at Baruch College/The City University of New York. It was tested anonymously with organization executives to help them improve their fundraising before being published.

As the author states, "This guide is for nonprofit leaders who are not satisfied with the amounts of money their organizations are raising." That must be about everyone.

The book works in three areas: (1) assessing your present fundraising to see what you can do to improve on it (2) using your analysis to convince your board or other executives that spending time and money to improve long-term fundraising capability is a good investment and (3) getting in the habit of using self-assessment of your fundraising.

The initial self-assessment is broken up into three parts: your general structure and management; your fundraising readiness; and the effectiveness of your fundraising efforts now.

You then use the results of the initial self-assessment to get support based on what was learned. If your assessment is strong enough, you can go on to look more closely at various areas for fundraising in the second set of self-assessments: directors, major donors, direct mail campaigns, corporations, foundations, government agencies, special events, federated fundraising organizations like The United Way, bequests and planned giving, and telethons. Each area has its own set of self-assessment questions.

I found the questions to be very effective in diagnosing why the nonprofit I serve with makes progress in some areas and doesn't in other areas. If we choose to, we can use these lists to pick our opportunities and organize our actions. I hope we do that.

Even if you plan to use a fundraising consultant, I think this workbook would be a good background to use first to put yourself in perspective for the advice your consultant will give you.

The book also has a very thorough appendix of resources (tied to each subject), an extensive bibliography, list of periodicals, and resource groups you can draw on. My only concern was how up-to-date this information is, given the age of the book. One of the resource organizations can probably help you with that if you cannot find something or someone.

Overcome your stalled thinking about how you should raise funds, become more effective, and serve all humanity more effectively as a result!

This is the only source I've seen that presents funding by explaining what lenders or venture capitalists look for, thereby enabling you to plan your presentation to fit their desires rather than just your own in order to secure funding. This seminar outlines what kind of financing is best for different types of situations to help keep you from chasing funds that you probably won't get because they don't match up with your situation. Discusses ALL sources of funds for small and growing businesses, from personal and private sources to angels, venture capital and government funds. Good information on how to build credit for your business to get a positive credit rating and improve chances of getting loans.

Very clear explanations on how to actually get separate credit for your business and then use that credit to get loans and investors. Great information about D&B and their credit scores on business. I wasn't aware of the industry secrets on how to get separate credit and haven't seen them anywhere else. Good discussion and examples of documents help protect yourself personally in case things don't work out. Wish I had gotten this sooner.

After more than three decades in fundraising, I have not come across a book like this that sums up the best thoughts about "the raising of money" in such a concise and powerful way. Whenever someone asks me what they can read to learn about fundraising, I recommend this book. And in this day of so many organizations seeking simply to preserve themselves regardless of the effectiveness of their programs, Jim Lord's words continue to resonate for me: "Organizations don't have needs...people do." Quite simply the best single book about fundraising I've come across.

This book will likely not become obsolete as long as nonprofits are raising money. It doesn't attempt to address many specifics, as are different in every situation and with every organization wishing to raise money. Instead, it addresses the theories and philosophies of philanthropy and the ideas behind the core art of fund raising. I'm having my employees and board of directors review this book when I am finished with it.

Over the years The Pioneer Fund has been maligned and misunderstood. This book presents their side in a literate and concise reporting of the science and the researchers they have helped fund. I found the book to be very informative and well written.

As the recently elected president of The Pioneer Fund, a charitable foundation that gives grants for the study of human genetic variation, it is only fair that I declare my interest before reviewing a book that chronicles the Fund's history, its benefactors, its directors, and most of all, its academic researchers and their findings. Perhaps the best known is the Minnesota Study of Identical Twins Reared Apart, which reunited about 100 twins separated early in life from around the world. The identical twins turned out to have an extraordinary number of traits in common while the fraternal twins were not nearly as alike. The Texas Adoption Project studied 300 families who had adopted one or more children. It found that in both personality and intelligence, the adoptees turned out to be much more like their biological families than their adoptive families. Together these two research projects demonstrated that about 50% of individual differences in IQ and personality are due to heredity. Other Pioneer funded studies used state-of-the-art Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) techniques to find that IQ scores are related to brain size, while others found that IQ scores are related to speed of neural transmission and brain evoked potentials. Pioneer funded research has also shown that IQ scores have real-life significance, being among the best predictors of work productivity, health, and longevity.

More controversial has been Pioneer's support of research on racial differences. One project was Audrey Shuey's (1958) massive compilation of every study of Black White IQ score differences, later revised by Osborne and McGurk (1982). Research by Arthur Jensen examined bias in tests (1980) and the general factor of intelligence (1998). Studies by Richard Lynn, Philip E. Vernon and myself made the race IQ debate international in scope, extending it beyond IQ scores by showing that East Asians, Whites, and Blacks obtained the same mean ranking on over 60 different traits in countries all around the world. (See Lynn's IQ and the Wealth of Nations, and my Race, Evolution, and Behavior).

Lynn, himself a Pioneer Fund grantee and largely responsible for four very important findings about human variation (the Asian IQ advantage, the effect of nutrition on IQ, the secular rise in IQ, and the average African IQ of 70), has provided an invaluable insider's guide to the Fund's history and accomplishments. My predecessor, the late Harry F. Weyher, contributed an extensive, informative, and at times amusing Preface in which he cogently noted that even Pioneer's severest critics pay it the compliment of having produced more intellectual "bang for the buck" than any comparable organization. Both Lynn and Weyher should be commended for telling the story of the Pioneer Fund's record of accomplishment.

This is a marvelous book, and a marvelous collection of essays, written by a clear and conscientious southern conservative. Richard Weaver was heir to the Southern Agrarian tradition of protest and opposition to the directions modern American society and politics was taking, particularly in the New Deal and post WW II eras. Writers like John Crowe Ransom, Donald Davidson, Allan Tate, Caroline Gordon and Robert Penn Warren, were caustic critics of modernity, of the decline in community, and a sense of the common good. Weaver, an english professor who might better be described as an intellectual, lived, learned, and worked in this tradition. Of all the essays in this collection, all of which are well written and thoughtful, two stand out in my mind. His essay on 'Lee the Philosopher' captures the pragmatic and common-sense spirit of southern political and social thought. Southerners felt little need for abstract theorizing, or great theoretical and philosophical models. Simple, everyday ideas, the ideals of common sense and everyday life, were more than enough for the down-to-earth farmers and planters of the American South. Weaver does a brilliant job of portraying Genl Lee as the epitome of the southern ideal of both gentlemanly duty and social thought. The second wonderful piece is 'The Two Types of American Individualism'. Weaver contrasts the individualism of a character like John Randolph of Roanoke, a fixture on the Virginia political scene in the early 1800's, with the individualism of Thoreau (and by implication the North). Randolph was a supreme example of an eccentric indivdual. He had bouts of insanity throughout his like, fought duels, appeared on the floor of Congress with his hunting dogs, jug of hard cider and his slave attendant, and refused to toe the party line. Yet, when the needs of his community demanded, or the society in which he lived was threatened, he was willing- even eager- to rally to the cause and defend it, despite his personal believes and misgivings. Weaver felt that Thoreau, on the other hand, with is notions of civil disobedience and voluntary taxation, put the individual ahead of the community, and would refuse to defend anything that was not justified according to his principles and beliefs. This was recipe for chaos and disorder, and disintegration. Weaver leaves no doubt as to which he preferes. The division between community and tradition, and individual liberty is a fault line that continues to run through American political and social ideas. Weaver, in powerfully defending tradition and community, has been one of the men shaping current political discourse, particularly among the social conservatives and in the religious right. He deserves to be read.

In short, if you are a friend of the South, or would like to read the words of a man who can explain the conservative axiology, this book is for you. The contents are essential for anyone seeking a neoclassical education. For me, reading Richard Weaver's Southern Essays brings together the final sentences of Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily."

"Then we noticed that in the second pillow was the indentation of a head. One of us lifted something from it, and leaning forward, that faint and invisible dust dry and acrid in the nostrils, we saw a long strand of iron-gray hair."

The book is a monument to Lee and Jackson. Anyone who wants to understand Picket's charge needs to read this excellent book.

Great practical advice. CD is very good also. I'd advise you to buy this on especially for the diagrams on how to set up a room.

A Review of
Special Events: Proven Strategies for Nonprofit Fundraising, second edition
By
Alan L. Wendroff
Published by
John Wiley & Sons, Inc. New York. 2003
ISBN 0-471-46235-7
Review written by Terence Ahab

It's been said that the reason so many new restaurants fail is that everybody who can boil water thinks he or she can be a successful restaurateur. A similar rule might apply to special event fund-raising - if you can pull off a successful dinner party, then maybe you figure you can plan a successful fundraising banquet. But as Alan Wendroff makes abundantly clear in the recently-released second edition of his book "Special Events: Proven Strategies for Nonprofit Fundraising," special event fundraising, to be truly successful, requires detailed planning along multiple fronts.

The centerpiece of Wendroff's hands-on approach to the topic is his Master Event Timetable, essentially a detailed 26-week task list that covers all the bases. Throughout the book, he stresses that financial success is only one of many goals to be achieved with special events, something that's easy to forget in the heat of battle. Most significantly, special events provide a convenient and comfortable opportunity to establish personal contact with current and potential stakeholders. And this book offers a host of ideas on how to capitalize on this unique opportunity to present your organization's mission and programs to a happily captive audience.

Chock full of charts, check lists and real-world examples of a variety of successful special event ideas, readers are taken from the initial step (should your group even put on a special event?) to the post-event wrap-up and evaluation. I found the chapters dealing with the recruitment and function of event chairs and community-wide event committee particularly valuable, but there is also an excellent chapter on the intricacies of budgeting for special events. But even an expert like Wendroff knows his limitations as he explains that the most detailed event budget is only an "educated guess."

The portion of the book dealing with using the Internet and e-mail in connection with special events offered less than I expected, but this area is evolving so rapidly that we might be better off just keeping tabs on the Howard Dean campaign's "meet up" concept to get some cutting edge ideas. One of the best features is the book's real "soup to nuts" coverage, from major topics like identifying high profile event chairs to some incredibly practical tips (i.e., provide award presenters with a printed copy of the text of the award engraving because it can often be difficult to read the engraving from the award itself).

My guess is that the novice special event organizer will want to keep this book close at hand while more experienced planners run across some fine points or suggestions that will help them improve their chances for success. The book includes a CD-ROM containing a number of useful documents including the Master Event Timetable, all of the book's author-created exhibits and samples of a press release and mission statement. With this book under his belt, Wendroff can now turn to a how-to book on opening a successful new restaurant.

Albert Jay Nock was perhaps one of the only three truly enduring bellettrists 20th century American letters yielded up. He deployed a truly lyric and insinuating prose style of uncommon grace and oddly puckish wit, and it served to unfurl one of the rarest of American minds - a shamelessly recalcitrant individualist whose intellectual evolution never obstructed or abrogated the core of the man: that the individual deserved his long-stolen propers; that the lowest common denominator should be tolerated but not consecrated or canonised; and, above all, that the State was an organism worthy of that which its crimes ever deserves: the fear and loathing of any and every man and woman who cares a whack about his or her fellows. To read him is a singular joy. And you will find no more sensible or beautifully-balanced introduction to the man and his singularity of writing than in this volume which Mr. Hamilton has composed with uncommon brilliance.

This is a wonderful collection of some of Nock's finest essays. It offers a great insight into one of the most brilliant (and overlooked) minds of the 20th century. He is a very gifted writer and a truly dedicated lover of liberty. If you enjoyed "Our Enemy The State" you will surely cherish this book.