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Penny for the guy?
What’s the longest-lived and most successful fundraising ‘ask’ ever? It has to be “Penny for the guy”. Boys in England have been asking for money from strangers in the street using this phrase for, possibly, hundreds of years, raising the equivalent of millions in the process to pay for their fireworks and festivities on the fifth of November.
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My Life in Politics and its Lessons for Fundraisers
Last Friday I delivered pamphlets on behalf of a candidate for the city council here in Toronto. I did the same for our local MP at the last federal election, and then acted as a scrutineer when the votes were counted. That’s it! My career in local and national politics came to not much more than a few hours delivering bumf. But what I learned from it will be longer-lived for sure.