Fundraiser Education

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…

When you have been in the nonprofit business as long as I have, you have seen everything. I have been to countless meetings, lunch appointments, seminars, dinners and various events. In the nonprofit world, you typically react to someone’s act. We all strive for the end result, whatever that turns out to be in the long run. I can wait forever if, in the end, it results in large quantities of time, talent or treasure for the institution I represent...

So have all the cool kids moved to digital? Is mail so yesterday? Sometimes it seems like that’s what I’m hearing. And I often feel like a grandma, warning people not to move everything online. But grandma or not, I’ll keep doing it. I know the arguments: Yes, email is cheaper to send. Yes, online…

"Fundcrushing" is a form of anti-fundraising that works on the mistaken assumption that people will want to respond to a situation if they understand how huge it is. It's exactly wrong. Donors are far more likely to give when they see how solvable a problem is, not how big. An overwhelmingly huge problem actually is…

We also are seeing a lot of fundraising "tourism" these days. You know—the drive-by attempts at raising money. Don’t get me wrong. It’s fun being a tourist. It’s about being entertained. It’s about feeling as though you’re "really" in the experience. When you’re seeking to raise serious resources for serious causes just cruising by doesn’t cut it, however...

For some time now, I’ve been saying fundraising has changed more in the past five to 10 years than in the previous 50. It’s due to the digital revolution that fundamentally has changed business as usual—for everyone. Change is inevitable, yet change is hard. And nonprofits seem to have a more difficult time embracing change than their for-profit counterparts. Perhaps it’s due to the way social-benefit organizations are structured.