You will meet many colleagues in the nonprofit business. If you are extremely fortunate, you will maintain relationships with valued colleagues for a number of years. Besides just going to and from work each day, I encourage you to meet and engage with colleagues. When you do, your knowledge expands greatly...
“You'll never know everything about anything, especially something you love,” said renowned chef and cooking instructor Julia Child. You and I love nonprofit work—and especially fundraising. Therefore, we should be lifelong learners and coachable. According to Webster’s, coachable is "capable of being easily taught and trained to do something better."...
I remember working for a social services agency where the social workers would often say to me, "I could never do what you do." I’d reply, "Back at you!" Each of us thought the other person’s talent was a mystery because we’d never learned it. And we’d never wanted to learn it. I also remember board members, sitting in a fundraising training I was facilitating and saying, "I could never ask for a major gift as well as you do."...
What is your biggest fundraising challenge? For many fundraisers, the answer is “fundraising by committee.” In fact, when I asked my readers to share their greatest challenges in creating their organizations’ fundraising appeals, their answers were telling...
An advisory board can be an incredible nonprofit and higher education resource, especially in fundraising. What is an advisory board? An advisory board is a non-governing body that provides advice and often serves as ambassadors for an officer or an organization. For example, in higher education at a state-sponsored university, a college or dean might have an advisory board...
If you have been trained correctly as a development professional you are taught to be donor-centered, provide outstanding customer-service and essentially strive to say “yes” to donors. I mean, just about every blog post that Richard and I write emphasizes in some way how to best serve your donors. We say it over and over again because, as industry professionals, you still don’t have putting donors first ingrained enough in your DNA. You’re getting better, but we still have work to do.
Crowdfunding has changed the face of disaster/emergency fundraising. It offers a way for people worldwide to offer monetary assistance to anyone, anywhere, anytime. It is hosted on platforms that the nonprofit does not have to own or run, thus taking away a lot of logistical details that can bog down an emergency response. But crowdfunding brings with it a new set of challenges to be addressed...
If you are organized and a perfectionist, you know the excitement when you check off an item on your to-do list. But many of us in the nonprofit world are not so organized. The key is learning how to rank job projects and tasks. Think about the Olympics. Categorize your workflow and to-do tasks as gold, silver or bronze in nature...
A charity that spends 20 percent on overhead and knocks its mission out of the ballpark is not less worthy of support than one that spends 10 percent on overhead but helps relatively few people. It’s one way of assessing things, but not necessarily the most meaningful...
Twice in the past month I visited with a CEO who had the sinking feeling that it was time to replace the nonprofit's chief development officer. The reason in both instances: a failure to connect with people. Both explained that unless pushed, their chief development officers would go to events and prefer to sit at their tables and not connect with the guests...
