A new strategy helps Mothers Against Drunk Driving revive its stagnant fundraising, recommit to its missin and invigorate its staff and volunteers.

By Margaret Battistelli Gardner

“We had created kind of a welfare state within the organization,” Heard explains. “Some chapters sat back and waited for their checks to come in.

“I realized early on, within the first six months, that if we were going to improve our financial picture, we had to change our culture,” he adds. “There were so many people within the organization that viewed fundraising as a negative, as a bad thing that we had to do. No one wanted to ask for money. We had volunteers who would say, ‘I didn’t come here to raise money.’”