Executive Issues

Earlier this year, my daughter and her classmates raised money for pediatric cancer (as they do every year) in a friendly game of teacher volleyball. Each teacher wore a T-shirt with a nickname on the back. My favorite was the principal’s, which said, “Mike Romanager.” The principal’s first name isn’t Mike, nor is his last…

Right now there are thousands of major gift officers (MGOs) and development professionals around the world who are being subjected to terrible management. Are you one of them? Just recently, I received a call from an MGO at a large university who told me that she is considering doing something else because her boss...

Welcome to The Salary Chronicles, where we’re bringing transparency to negotiation and salaries, one story at a time. We ask women to share their experiences negotiating their salaries and what their advice is for others doing the same. We share these stories anonymously so they feel comfortable speaking as openly and as freely as possible.…

There are several schools of thought in fundraising. The first two are polar opposites and the rest are somewhere on the continuum in between. In fundraising, as in life, extremes are usually, well, too extreme...

“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."...

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...

Cultivating and sustaining relationships with corporate partners is a necessary but often difficult task for the nonprofit corporate development officer. This officer is charged with demonstrating to the corporate partner how and why the nonprofit’s mission aligns with the corporate partner’s priorities, as well as ensuring the corporate partner’s continued support of the nonprofit’s mission, even when the partner’s priorities evolve...

She was the director of the annual fund at a small Midwestern college. He was director of planned gifts. What should have have been a productive professional relationship soured into a bitter, on-the-job rivalry that eventually prompted the annual fund director to resign. The annual fund director—who asked that her name be withheld in order…

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...

I need to get this off my chest. I am sick and tired of hearing about overhead. I don’t even mean in the overhead-ratio police kind of way. I mean at all. It is an irrelevant metric. It is a complete and utter distraction from the measurements that really matter. I’ll go one step further.…