Fund for Animals Plans for Risk and Wins

Essentially, with an approach that rewards failure comes an inherent view from management that it must foster an environment where employees are willing to take risks — in our case, rewarding failure in fundraising as it applies to testing and “pushing the envelope.”

We all have ideas we regret not testing. When it came time to actually invest, for some reason or another, we backed off and compromised, only to learn of a similar idea being tested by someone else. As fundraisers, we must endorse an attitude of risk taking and not just following what has worked in the past. As budgets are set at the beginning of a new year, a risk-testing line item should be instituted to allow for testing new approaches.