The International Fundraising Conference has just closed in Holland and that seems a good place to start this week's round-up.

Paul de Gregorio shares some of the great videos that were shown in sessions.

Lucy Caldicott describes her favourite moments from the conference.

I'm sure they'll be more interesting posts on the event in the coming week as well. Elsewhere...

The Veritus conclude another 'must-read' series. This time it is on outrageous donor service.

Eight reasons why bad training happens to good non-profits. From Beth Kanter.

I found this post on what staff want board members to know by Kivi Leroux Miller interesting.

I tweeted last week how impressed I was by the Sightsaver 'A Million Miracles' campaign and the their press ad. Open Fundraising explain a bit more about the appeal.

Simon Scriver on restorative fundraising.

Is it me you're looking for? Francesco Ambrogetti takes a look at the sad extinction of the donor sapiens.

Pamela grow shares a simple, but highly effective donor acquisition letter.

New Philanthropy Capital have released an interesting report on 10 innovations in global philanthropy (though 8/10 of the case studies are from North America and Europe).

Donor Voice ask if your organisation is a "watch, observe, guess" organisation or a "listen and act" one.

Anne Green questions if your annual report brilliant or boring?

Clairifcation with 10 ways to earn donors' trust and confidence.

Bernadette Jiwa shares an interesting story about her local ice cream parlour. There's an analogy with our donors there somewhere!

On my recent Snowdon trek I was impressed to find these two guys at the summit collecting for the local mountain rescue. Most of the time you are lucky if more than 1 in 100 people put something in your bucket. Here the ratio was more like in 1 in 4.

It reminded me of the importance of making the right ask to people, at the right time. If these guys were collecting in the local supermarket, I would've probably walked by.

The fact I'd just cycled and walked 25k and suffered horrendous cramp meant I was in the right (emotional) frame of mind to give!

Do you have any examples of other charities making a great offer at an appropriate place?

One that sprung to mind was the Canal & River trust asking people to sign up for a regular gift when using a waterway or footpath.

Do share any others you have!

 A big thank you to everyone who took the time to sponsor me for my Snowdon challenge. I've a nice story (and fundraising idea) to share with you next week. In the meantime enjoy my latest round-up of articles worth reading. 

I was disappointed to miss this year's SOFII 'I wish I'd thought of that!' event. Pell & Bales summarise some of the learnings from the day.

The Bloomerang blog issue 10 challenges every fundraiser must make to themselves.

Joanne Fritz at About.com host's September's Nonprofit blog carnival. This month the theme is social media.

Wild Woman Fundraising describes the fundraising art of war.

Agents of Good explain why automation kills. I'll definitely be using some of this for our Christmas appeal!

Paul de Gregorio questions whether innovation is what we really need to do to be successful.

Veritus Group conclude a great five part series on creating a radical culture of philanthropy.

Donor Voice share a ten point framework for direct mail testing.

More on direct marketing from Adrian Salmon on the Rogarge Critical Fundraising blog. He looks at the eye-scanning experiments of Professor Vogele.

The Osborne Group describe ten things great relationship builders do.

Clairification on why and how to invoke the power of Thank You. In particular I like some of the great links to various studies on gratitude.

And on thank you's, Donor Relations Guru asks when is enough enough?

Future Fundraising Now: Donors long to know WHY they should give to you.

Lucy Innovation asks why do you fundraise?

Finally, Zoe Amar wants to talk about transparency.