How to Know If You'll Be Successful

Leadership is responsible for leading an organization. This is fundamental. Wherever your leadership — board and executive — lead, others will follow. If your leadership has set a fundraising objective to achieve, that very act places the ultimate responsibility for achieving that end upon the leaders.

Demonstrating that the numbers simply don't "add up" in a fundraising effort is the first step in getting leadership's attention. The next step — the one most critical in moving to a place of "challenging but doable" — is to create shared ownership for the results through the identification of self-interest.

What is in the direct interest of the leadership? What will have the greatest impact upon it?

The best time to confront this is in the beginning. When receiving any goal in which you weren't a party in its determination, run the numbers first to see if success is even a possibility. If not, seek to obtain the buy-in of leadership through first demonstrating the simple unlikelihood of being successful, then appealing to the individual and corporate self-interest of leadership to move to a place of realism for both goal and program.

I want to thank the thoughtful and well-motivated fund development director for her query.

Please let me hear from you concerning your particular situation and the difficulties you face in developing sustainable revenue streams. Email me, and I'll give you a quick response. I'll choose some of these thorny obstacles to share, along with my insights, in upcoming columns.

Whether your organization is small or large, well-heeled or struggling from day to day, you'll benefit immeasurably from taking a good, hard look at whether it spends more of its time in the fundraising emergency room or makes planned visits to the wellness clinic. You'll learn what sends you to the emergency room and how not to go there — anymore than you absolutely must.