Perhaps it has been the fact that we are into year two of this crazy pandemic. Maybe it is because I have seen many charitable organizations totally botch their fundraising lately. Or, it could even be that I am a fifty-year-old curmudgeon. The fact remains that after decades of being a professional fundraiser, I...
Continue reading...relationship
Thanks to the Women out there!
March 8 is International Women’s Day, and it’s a big thing. The statistics tell us that seventy to eighty percent of fundraisers are women. In my own career as a fundraiser, I have only hired a handful of men — the rest were all women! Moreover, the statistics tell us that women only represent...
Continue reading...UPDATE: The Relationship Needs to Change
A few years back, I wrote about the need to change the relationship with the prospect/donor (here). There, I quoted my good friend Jason Lewis as saying, “Once an initial gift has been received, the relationship has changed, and both sides of the relationship will have higher expectations of the other.” But, as we...
Continue reading...Noble Failure: An Update
I was a fan of the ACBF (Andrea & Charles Bronfman Foundation) before it wound down, specifically how Bronfman went about his thoughtful philanthropy. In his book, The Art of Giving, Bronfman speaks of noble failure (the ability for a project to fail in order to gain valuable learning experiences). I wrote about this...
Continue reading...Issues Raising Funds — Part II
Last week, I wrote about golf and fundraising — the advent of the graphite shaft amplifies your golf swing (good or bad), just as COVID has amplified fundraising (good or bad). In last week’s posting, I shared three issues in raising funds that you may encounter, namely staff turnover, the rainmaker, and the organization’s...
Continue reading...Signals that you will soon have Issues Raising Funds
Fundraising during COVID is like using a graphite golf club. Those things that go well go really well, and the things that go poorly go really poorly. Just as a graphite shaft will amplify your shot (good or bad), so too will fundraising in a pandemic. The donors seen as the 1-percenters have seen...
Continue reading...Putting the donor in the center
COVID-19 has really taken a toll on good stewardship. Donor receptions, tours, and in-person briefings have been put on pause out of an abundance of caution. But, how do fundraisers relate to donors effectively with these restrictions? The key is putting the donor at the center of the virtual experience. It is still quite...
Continue reading...We are Family!
Welcome to 2021 — here’s hoping that this is a much better year than 2020! Over the break, I spent quite a lot of time chatting with former colleagues and new contacts about the wonderful world of fundraising and have further entrenched my notion that fundraisers belong to one big huge professional family. Not...
Continue reading...New Year’s Resolutions
This past year has …… sucked. I vividly remember picking up friends from the airport over the holidays last year when China was on lockdown and proclaiming that North Americans would never allow such a shutdown. Boy, was I wrong! I miss the comradery of working with colleagues, visiting with donors, and being able...
Continue reading...Discussions Around the Dinner Table
I am positive that today’s dinner table discussions are more animated than they have been for the past while. Whether it is a discussion about the US election, the pandemic, thanksgiving, or even year-end philanthropy, these conversations are bound to be thought-provoking, to say the least. I was fortunate enough to attend a training...
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