Customer Reviews

The 11 Questions Every Donor Asks and the Answers All Donors Crave: How You Can Inspire Someone to Give Generously

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I purchased this after an email from a publication stating what a great book this is for fundraisers - a "must". I disagree. As a seasoned fundraiser with over 8 years of experience, I found this book to be for those entering the field or with under 2 years of experience. It is a basic overall understanding of fundraising.

An amazing gem of a book. I've been fundraising for social change projects for nearly forty years, and Harvey outlines every key lesson I've learned, and a wealth of lessons I hadn't thought of. If you want to get involved in your community and help make change, at some point you're going to have to raise money, whether from bake sales, monthly pledges, or major donors. You want to know what makes people respond, but you want to proceed with integrity, not some hit and run sales job. Harvey teaches you how. I wish I had this book twenty years ago, but I'm glad I have it now. In fact, I'm in the middle of fundraising for a major voter engagement project, and found it enormously helpful to overcome my own fears and hesitations as I picked up the phone to call people and ask if they could help. Essential for anyone who ever raises money for a worthy cause.

Paul Loeb, author of Soul of a Citizen: Living With Conviction in a Cynical Time and The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizen's Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear

An industry classic is born, I think. This book is unlike any other. It stuffs decades of "in the trenches" fundraising know-how into 100 chatty pages you can read in under an hour.

Harvey McKinnon's career as a fundraiser began in the 1970s, and he's been asking for money ever since. His firm, with offices in Vancouver and Toronto, has an international client list, ranging from Amnesty International Canada to the American Institute for Cancer Research to Australia's ActionAid; with special depth in health care and environmental defense. I mention all this because (1) Harvey knows a ton of people, many of whom contributed stories to this book; (2) his personal experience is top shelf; and (3) his eponymous firm is extraordinarily successful. Why does he have such a great client list? There's just one reason: he knows how to raise money. And what he knows he shares in this book. Harvey's your gracious, amusing, enthralling host. But he's not alone. You'll meets lots of other fundraisers and hear their tales of triumph and misstep. Answering donors' questions well, especially the unspoken but predictable ones, is a secret -- maybe THE secret -- to success in fundraising.

This book, I expect, will prove both comforting for fundraising veterans and empowering for people new to the field. It takes a vast profession and reduces it to 11 key questions you repeatedly need to answer.

This is a good book, packed with solid advice for beginning fundraisers, or for those volunteering at a local non-profit and serving in a fundraising role.

On the face of it, the questions that Harvey McKinnon identifies seem simple. Ah, but knowing what motivates the donor to ask these specific questions AND knowing how to answer them in a way that prompts the donor to give - that's where the real lessons are here. Read these pages slowly. There's a lot more to McKinnon's economical prose than initially meets the eye.

This is a wonderful book from an individual who has real depth of experience with a wide range of organizations. The stories and examples will help the reader understand -- and use -- the valuable advice offered in this very readable book. It serves as a quick introduction to the entire field of fundraising. I especially commend Chapter 4 ("How Much Do You Want") and Chapter 5 ("Why Your Organization"). I've been involved in nonprofit fundraising for 30 years, and I was inspired to rededicate myself to this work.

Stephen Hitchcock, author of Open Immediately: Straight Talk about Direct Mail Fundraising and co-author, with Mal Warwick, of Ten Steps to Fundraising Success.

I love this book because it's all about the donor's perspective. So many fundraising books lecture from the viewpoint of what we want the donor to do for us, but this book shows quite simply what they want us to do, to make them more comfortable and so, to give more. But I also love it because it's written by someone who not only knows his donors and knows fundraising, he also knows how to get it across in a warm, accessible style with no padding but with lots of passion. Harvey's a great writer and this is an easy, enjoyable read full of useful insights, so I'd recommend it to anyone.

Ken Burnett