March 2010

BY NICK KREWEN 

Harvey McKinnon has made a lot of money for a lot of non-profits.

By his own estimation, the author of 2008’s 11 Questions Every Donor Asks and founder of Canadian fundraising consultancy Harvey McKinnon Associates, has raised “a couple hundred million dollars” for organizations as diverse as Amnesty International, the Canadian Cancer Society, the Ontario March of Dimes, the Sick Kids Foundation, Ecojustice, Oxfam Canada, Greening Australia, and even the Vancouver Aquarium.

Based in Vancouver and Toronto, Harvey McKinnon Associates doesn’t just specialize in getting these non-profits money, but in building relationships and direct response.  Although he and his 17 staffers employ a number of techniques — direct mail, monthly giving, legacy marketing, development audits and others — to raise money for the organizations that hire them, McKinnon, a former Oxfam Canada senior development officer, says there are three key rules to remember when engaging potential donors.

By Karen Bliss

Most of us know how to give blood, but how does one become a bone marrow donor? The process is simple. After filling out a form on giftoflife.org and upon acceptance, a swab kit — to administer a swab of the inside of your cheek — will be sent to you, which you then mail back. Samples are tissue typed and entered into a registry.

Gift of Life’s mission is to facilitate bone marrow and blood stem cell transplants for patients suffering from life-threatening illnesses through the recruitment and registration of prospective unrelated donors.

“One in 1,000 of the donors in Gift of Life’s registry are called to donate for a patient in need each year,” it reads on the web site. “Approximately 25 percent of the requests received from transplant centers are for bone marrow; 75 percent are for peripheral blood stem cells.”

To register through the web site, one first needs to confirm some donor guidelines, including age, health and medical guidelines, and that you reside in Canada or America. It also asks for your commitment. “I am willing to donate to any patient in need,” it states. “I understand that while donation is purely voluntary, the registry is counting on me should I be called as a match someday. Withdrawal at that time would give false hopes to the patient(s) in urgent need.”

By Karen Bliss

Singer-songwriter Sarah Harmer, and co-founder of Protecting Escarpment Rural Land, is proof that a bunch of determined civilians can successfully battle a major company, Nelson Aggregate.

PERL’s executive committee and hundreds of members have been on a mission to protect Mount Nemo in Burlington, Ontario’s Niagara Escarpment, a region designated by the United Nations as a “world biosphere reserve.” The conservation area, popular for rock climbing, is filled with limestone boulders, wetlands, ancient cedars and endangered butternut trees.

When limestone quarry owner Nelson Aggregate put in a request to expand its operation by 80 hectares, the fight began.

“We are definitely in the final chapter of the saga, which has been five years in the works,” Harmer tells Samaritanmag.

By Karen Bliss

Musician Ben Harper is calling attention to one of his number one charities, Living Lands & Water (www.livinglandsandwaters.org), dedicated to cleaning up and preserving America’s rivers.

“It’s run by a gentleman named Chad Pregracke and his life devotion is to cleaning up rivers,” Harper told Samaritanmag.com. “He built his own barge and he travels around [..] and goes up and down rivers and cleans them up by hand. He’s built his own crane, his own barge, and he is a true revolutionary and a true hero.”

In the bio area of the Living Lands & Waters web site, it reads that Pregracke founded the not-for-profit organization in 1998 at age 23 out of East Moline, Illinois. The charity now operates with 10 full-time staff and has four barges, a towboat, six workboats, two skid steers, five work trucks and a large box truck.

“With this equipment, the crew is able to travel and work in an average of nine states a year along the Mississippi, Illinois, Ohio, Missouri, and Potomac Rivers, as well as many of their tributaries.  Since the project’s inception, Chad, his crew, and over 60,000 volunteers have collected over six million pounds of debris from our nation’s greatest rivers.