Letters From the Almoner

God has a sense of humor. Back when I worked in Hollywood, my goal was to work in development. In Hollywood, development means putting movies together. Now I work in development, but not in Hollywood. In the most of the rest of the world, “development” means fundraising.

For the past ten years, I’ve raised money for Golden Harvest Food Bank in Augusta, GA. I discovered that I have a bit of a knack for it, and that I love helping other people raise money, especially churches. This love turned into a blog, The Almoner.com, a companion website, Fundraiserwiki.com, and a book, Letters from the Almoner: How and Why to Raise Money in Church.

I’ve read a lot of books about fundraising, and they tend to be pretty boring. Really boring. Unless of course you’re a professional fundraiser. I tried to spice up Letters from the Almoner by taking a page out of one of my favorite books,  The Screwtape Letters. While you won’t find any demons in this book (you’ll have to check out my other book, Demoniac, for those), you will discover a series of fictional letters from a professional fundraiser to his parish priest. Sometimes funny, hopefully instructive, and occasionally insightful, Letters from the Almoner tries to take the sting out of parish fundraising.