Robert A. Burdenski is an internationally-recognized annual giving consultant, author, speaker and trainer, and has served more than 150 institutions since 1994. He has worked with clients of all sizes throughout the U.S., Europe, Australia & Asia. He's the author of the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) bestsellers, Innovations in Annual Giving: Ten Departures That Worked, and More Innovations in Annual Giving: Ten Global Departures That Worked.

In today's challenging fundraising environment, Bob works collaboratively with clients to review past performance and update strategies with new ideas and methods that improve program results. (Pictured above: Bob at the CASE Asia-Pacific Conference in Singapore, 2005)

It's Time For
More Innovations In Annual Giving
Bob's brand-new CASE book - More Innovations in Annual Giving: Ten Global Departures That Worked - features creative annual giving strategies from institutions around the world, including Australia, India, Singapore, Hong Kong, France, the U.K. and beyond.  Included are examples of data mining, leadership giving, reunions parent funds, faculty and staff appeals, the Internet, direct mail and more.  Read more about the book and order from the CASE Books website.

Bob In CASE Currents: Five Annual Giving Strategies For Today
Annual giving remains a foundation of the development program, but best practices are changing fast.  Read Bob's quotes in CASE Currents about evolving strategies for annual giving.
Download a pdf copy of the article

Bob Receives CASE Crystal Apple
Award For Teaching Excellence
The CASE Award recognizes the highest-rated
presenters at CASE conferences world-wide.
Bob was presented the award at the CASE Asia
Pacific Conference in Hong Kong. Read the full story.

Give Your Program a "Recession Audit"
Fundraising's facing challenges, but annual giving programs still have a crucial role to play in attracting operating support, identifying interested donors and qualifying major gift prospects.  Bob fine-tunes your strategies and helps your program do more with less.

What's Your Annual Giving Score?
Effective annual giving isn't solely about the bottom line. It involves acquiring, retaining and reactivating donors, and moving them up the major and planned gift ladder. Bob Burdenski examines the nuances of annual giving and rates the "health" of your program.

Bob is an independent consultant and is not part of any larger fundraising corporation, vendor or service provider.  Working with Bob doesn't teach you about a single method -- Bob shares examples from hundreds of institutions from around the world. A signature component of Bob's work is his customized Annual Giving Program Review, and there are many other ways in which institutions Work with Bob Burdenski.

Bob works with colleges and universities, hospitals and other not-for-profit organizations to effect change and improve their annual giving performance, using a variety of data analysis tools, program evaluation and planning methods, and best practice examples collected through his years of consulting work.

He works with direct marketing programs ranging in size from hundreds of prospects to hundreds of thousands of prospects. Bob launched one of the first computerized phonathon calling programs in the U.S. at Cleveland State University in 1991.

He coaches organizations on the implementation of leadership annual giving programs that advance donor giving capacity and identify qualified major gift prospects.

He works with membership and alumni relations programs to identify affinity-building opportunities for program enhancement.

He is a recognized expert on ePhilanthropy strategies, and Bob provides client assessments and best practice examples for the quickly-evolving world of online fundraising.

He uses data mining and predictive modeling to enhance an organization's donor acquisition capabilities, and he conducts focus groups and surveys to help organizations understand the true giving interests and motivations of their prospects.

For those organizations in transition or in need of additional assistance, he provides program planning, transition counsel, and start-up program design.

Bob also serves as the moderator (and janitor) of FundList, the largest email listserv for fundraisers, with more than 2,000 subscribers. He annually oversees FundList's Annual Giving Appeal Exchange, which facilitates samples sharing each year between more than 200 institutions.

You can download many of Bob's published articles, and learn more about the books he's authored, on the Books and Articles page.

A whole "briefcase" of sample materials used by other institutions, as well as other miscellaneous resources Bob has collected, can be found in Bob's Briefcase.

You can view a list of his current and previous clients on the Clients page.

Bob Burdenski speaks to fundraising audiences all over the world. View a list of past and future speaking topics on the Speeches and Appearances page.