Fundraiser Education

If you’re like me, you didn’t start out intending to be a fundraiser. I stumbled into fundraising more than 16 years ago when I transitioned from working for a regional grant-making foundation to my first development director job—and it was love at first sight. I loved my job. And I’d finally found my passion! But after two short years, I walked out the door. Why did I leave? And what can you learn from my departure from what remains, to this day, one of my favorite jobs?...

In the competitive environment of NGO fundraising, understanding where you’ll get the best return on investment can often be the difference between keeping afloat and sinking. From the perspective of an international NGO, successful fundraising or business development can utilize a number of different approaches, each with its own set of particulars...

The most common complaint I hear from people trying to raise money is that they don’t have enough time. “There aren’t enough hours in the day,” “I can’t get everything done,” “I’m just one person,” “How do those other nonprofits get it all done?” Sound familiar? Here’s some good news: You’ll never get it all…

There are just three components to hiring a great development director: Get a good candidate pool. Ask the right questions. Recognize the right answers. For the moment, I’m going to assume you know how to get a good candidate pool. I addressed the second item, asking the right questions, in my earlier post, "Great Interview…

When I work with clients on strategy, one of my greatest responsibilities is to shift their thinking so they can look at things in new ways, step up to a higher plane and think big. Boards of directors and staff alike usually are too mired in today’s challenges to envision a dramatically improved future, let…

One of the best ways to get work done for your nonprofit is with extra hands. Think about it: You’re one person. You can only do so much. There’s a limit to the amount of work you can do during the day. And I’m really sure you have more to do than you can get…

Black and white. Right and wrong. Good and bad. Early in your career and 20s, that’s normally how you can see things. Your job. Your faith. Your relationships. Your beliefs. Your ideas. It makes it a lot easier to be an advocate and passionate supporter because, well, you’re right. Your cause is just. In fact,…

Last week I was in Minneapolis for the Grantmakers for Effective Organizations (GEO) conference. I was there primarily to give a short talk, called "Want to Help Communities of Color? Stop Trickle-Down Community Engagement," and avoid work, but I stuck around for most of the conference. As I attended workshops and panels, listened to the…

Once upon a time, there was a need. A number of people recognized it and wanted to do something about it. They knew this would involve them giving money. That wasn’t a problem. They needed to be organized, so they set up an office. An organization. The government had decided that organizations like this should…

My idea to publish a list of very useful nonprofit leadership books came from the class I teach at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communications on nonprofit communications strategy. Every year, I say to my students during the last class, "If nonprofit leaders—board and staff—read the same material you did this spring, the nonprofit…