Two weeks ago, the heat index in New York City was 107 degrees. One would have thought the session I participated in with a finance executive and a bunch of fundraising executives would have been just that hot, right?
Executive Issues
Many organizations pay lip service to supporting their fundraising team but end up failing miserably. Your board, your executive director, and your program and administration staff can undercut fundraising efforts easily. And in many organizations it’s happening all the time. Take this simple quiz to see if your organization has a supportive culture of philanthropy.
This clip is from the video roundtable held at the Reinventors Network. The conversation included Jacob Harold of GuideStar, Mari Kurashi of GlobalGiving and Clara Miller of The F.B. Heron Foundation. The full conversation is online here. My comments are focused on the system of philanthropy — individual and institutional, recognizing the digital infrastructure on which it now stands. The panelists had all just been asked to think about how these funds — voluntary, fragmented and privately controlled — could be directed toward major, rapidly threatening crises such as climate change.
In "Give and Take," Adam Grant’s premise is that there is more to the secret of success than hard work, talent and luck. What’s missing is generosity. Givers excel in a collaborate work environment, but can burn out easily if they don’t see the impact of their contributions or don’t learn how to set boundaries. This is especially true for people in helping professions such as nonprofit leadership, cause marketing and social responsibility. Here are Grant’s four tips for creating a cultures of successful givers at your organization.
Create a great plan. Execute. Fine-tune. Execute. Fine-tune. Even after great success, pull out the plan and execute, fine-tune, execute ...
As we compete to drive the greatest donor experience, create the best offers for our supporters and communicate to build the best relationships, sometimes our own sacred cows get in the way.
Among the big-picture findings in the Giving USA report, there are things that can guide your fundraising strategy for the next several months.
Everybody in the nonprofit world talks these days about innovation, but not about what drives change: open debate and critical thinking. Fortunately, a small but growing cadre of critical thinkers is trying to change things by starting to ask tough questions and demanding honest answers from grant makers, their peers and their constituents. But what questions should we grapple with as we confront tough issues? Here are some to consider before racing to pronounce the “next big new important thing.”
Sometimes we have to start acting like who we want to be when we grow up, instead of waiting to actually get there before we act the part.
Sometimes we have to start acting like who we want to be when we grow up, instead of waiting to actually get there before we act the part.