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When Kwi Brennan came to New Jersey’s Rutgers University in 1996, volunteers culled from the alumni and student body were raising about $2 million a year through telemarketing. Not bad, but not exactly blazing either.

Then Brennan, the senior director of annual giving, and his supervisor, Victoria Wilt, turned up the heat. Telemarketing revenues jumped up to $2.5 million in 1997, $2.9 million in 1998, $3.1 million in 1999, $3.7 million in 2000, $4.2 million in 2001, $5 million in 2002 and $5.1 million in 2003.

M.J. Dunion knew she had a mess to clean up six years ago when she was hired as director of development operations at Boston Medical Center, formed when a private academic medical institution and a city hospital merged. Her main task was to combine several departments that had been using different databases in fundraising efforts. She knew this largely was a matter of using the right technology as efficiently as possible.

Wasn’t the AFP conference in Seattle something else? So many people, so little ventilation. But no matter … we all got what we went for — oodles of information about how to manage nonprofits and raise the funds to keep them going and further their missions.

There were some fascinating sessions, many so crowded that the fire marshall was none too happy about it. But not every one was jam packed, and that provided insight into the collective mindset of the nonprofit universe.

Suppose a new or potential donor visits your Web site looking for more information about your organization. She finds an online tool called “My Guide” that promises to give her just what she’s looking for. After spending less than two minutes providing some simple, personal information, she clicks the “Submit” button.

The Senate’s Governmental Affairs Committee and the House of Representatives’ Committee on Government Reform hosted the final hearing on postal reform in late March. There, U.S. Postal Service officials had one last opportunity to present their proposals for reform of the USPS.

Almost everyone has something of value crammed in the corner of the attic — an antique lamp, a cuckoo clock or a stack of baseball cards Mom forgot to toss years ago. With the birth of eBay, those dusty throwaways can find new homes. Enter: MissionFish.

Not so long ago, direct mail personalization meant slapping a donor’s name and address on a form letter and calling it a day. It was a statement: The more personal information an organization presented in a solicitation to Mr. Sample, the greater his significance. How times have changed — sort of.

When Craig Carpenter took over as director of development at Seattle’s Union Gospel Mission in March 2002, it was the worst of times and, well, it was the worst of times. The country was still in shock from the events of Sept. 11, 2001. War was looming, the economy was reeling, and the stock market was tumbling. People were afraid to open their mail for fear of being infected with anthrax.

When I started the cranky little newsletter, Who’s Mailing What! (now Inside Direct Mail) in 1984, I persuaded America’s premier liberal democratic fundraiser, Roger Craver, of Craver, Mathews, Smith & Co., to write a three-part series on the opposition — the then-current republican efforts that were superb in terms of elegance, sophistication and power. Craver wrote:

As the nature and characteristics of various donor-base paradigms evolve, the Internet will be the response medium of choice for a fast-growing number of donors and prospects. Setting up a successful e-mail fundraising program requires patience and investment. Meanwhile, aggressive direct mail probably will remain the core technique, certainly among those whose initial or ongoing gifts have been achieved via this medium. Rather than a replacement, e-fundraising is another tool in the arsenal of cultivation and fundraising programs -- one that will fit both a specific niche as well as a complementary role. Following are some tips for creating, sustaining

On weekends, I used to hitchhike from Illinois to Kansas to see my girlfriend, and whenever my thumb successfully caused a motorist to pull off onto the side of the road, I would say, quite sadly, “Hey, will you give a guy a lift?”

Today, I’m still looking for a good lift. A good lift note, that is. Something to give my letter a boost. To move it on down the road … (Ever notice how analogies break down when carried out to their logical conclusions?)

The Salvation Army rolled out its Online Red Kettle program nationwide this past holiday season, after testing the concept in Atlanta, Dallas and Washington, D.C., in 2002. The way it worked: Volunteers who signed up to be “virtual bell ringers” had their own Web pages from which they could send e-mail messages to family and friends, asking for contributions. The pilot produced $60,000 in online donations during the months of November and December, but when the program was given a national stage a year later, total donations reached only $45,000.

Brian Cowart, director of direct marketing for CARE, one of the world’s largest private international humanitarian organizations.

Assume that you have just stepped into the marketing job for an established nonprofit organization. Your predecessor has disappeared in the midst of planning a 100,000-name prospecting mailing, leaving you with a clever new package, ready to test against an established control; an updated housefile; and a yellow sticky note on your computer screen that says: “Set to go. Just have to order the lists. Call our broker.” Where do you begin?

Why do some nonprofit organizations thrive while others, just as worthy, languish in fundraising mediocrity, barely able to raise enough money to keep the doors open?

Sure, the fundraising environment is getting tougher and tougher every day because of increased competition. But even in this climate, organizations can achieve remarkable results and thrive.

Renting lists for your mailing campaigns is a necessary — but inherently risky — expense. You’re spending money for an uncertain outcome because you can’t gauge exactly how names on a given list will respond at any particular moment.

So your priority in any list-rental situation should be to maximize return on investment. Here are five strategies for getting the most value out of your list-rental dollars:

There’s a gleam in Vaneeda Bennett’s eye that borders on mischievous and a lingering quality to her laugh that makes you wonder what she’s up to. What she’s been up to — for the past nine years, at least — is a major upheaval of the thinking in the development office at the American Diabetes Association. An upheaval that’s lead to a 100 percent cumulative increase across four development areas at the national, Virginia-based organization over the past eight years.

High in the pantheon of elegant fundraisers is Mothers Against Drunk Driving, whose only business is public education.

This, in opposition to many charities that only claim it’s their business. A particularly egregious example occurred during the early 1990s, when Somali poachers were decimating herds of elephants (and occasional tourists who got in the way) in neighboring Kenya and selling the ivory.

According to conventional wisdom, the world of fundraising for nonprofit organizations includes separate camps of volunteers and donors. Donors shall give their money, volunteers shall give their time, and never the twain shall meet, right?

Not necessarily. Increasingly, fundraising officials at nonprofits are seeking volunteers willing to make the leap to financial sponsorship. Volunteers are being asked to contribute money precisely because they’re already physically and emotionally involved with the organization. If they’re more or less committed to the cause through volunteer work, it makes sense to ask them to make a monetary contribution.

Sometimes, seeing means believing. Other times, seeing means writing. Writing checks, that is.

Such was the case for donors who rallied recently to contribute more than $7 million to a capital and endowment campaign for The National Dance Institute-New Mexico in Santa Fe.