Product Description

Asking Properly is almost certainly the most authoritative book ever written about the creative aspects of fundraising. It is no mere commentary on current practice - if offers a comprehensive checklist on how to optimise the creative presentation of the fundraising message. This book will prove invaluable to anyone involved in raising money for charity.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #619210 in Books
• Published on: 1996-12-04
• Binding: Hardcover
• 224 pages

Pierre-Bernard Le Bas, UNHCR, Geneva, Switzerland
It's wise, uncomprising, devastingly critical of poor fundraising, brilliantly illustrative of what is good...

Harvey mcKinnon, Harvey McKinnon & Associates, Vancouver,Canada
There's a practical benefit on every page. When you apply its secrets you can hardly fail to improve your fundraising.

From the Publisher
When we reprinted Asking Properly our first thought was to revise and update it, given that it first appeared in 1996. But on reflection that proved to be both impractical and unnecessary. So please don’t be distracted by examples from the recent past or by statistics that may now have been surpassed. Just enjoy the brilliant words, the well-chosen illustrations and the instructive anecdotes. And benefit from this fine depiction of the art and craft of fundraising which time has shown to be not just instructive and enduring, but quite remarkably prophetic.

Customer Reviews

Simply, the best
This is undoubtedly the best book ever written on the subject of creativity in fundraising and communication. A short list, admittedly, but an important subject nonetheless. OK, I confess to some bias here as George Smith is a lifelong friend and I do own The White Lion Press Limited, his publisher. But if you want to see lots of other independent reviews of this timeless classic go to their site on line. You'll see a common consensus that this is one book no serious fundraiser should be without.

George Smith is world famous as a witty, perceptive observer of voluntary action and a precise, concise and captivating writer. He senses the beaming ghost of Orwell peering over his shoulder as he writes. So Asking Properly is an entertaining read from start to finish. But its 220 brightly illustrated pages add up to much more than that, built as this seminal book is upon anecdotes and experiences from more than three decades of engineering and crafting many of the best fundraising and social change campaigns of our times. Smith is an accomplished and rigorous guide, who frequently stops his readers in their tracks, forcing them to reconsider long-held views that he effortlessly exposes as ill-conceived or just plain wrong. As former UNICEF fundraising supremo PB Le Bas said of it, `Asking Properly is one of those very few books you will want to keep beside you, for life.'


Ken Burnett
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