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Bad Boards
It seems churlish to complain about perfectly lovely people who volunteer their time, not to mention their money, to serve on nonprofit boards. And, truthfully, most of the time, there is not all that...
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Self Promotion
No, no. This is not about me. It is most definitely about you. One of the things I hear a lot from development directors is, “They don’t understand what I do.” They, of course, are the board, the...
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Marriage and Boards
My daughter recently got (re)married. For a variety of reasons (prior marriages, blended families that really never blended), they decided that the ceremony would be only for the three of them—my...
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The Dance of Development
The past few days, I’ve had floaters in my eyes. You know, those black dots that glide along at the edges of your vision, sometimes swooping in to center stage. They are really distracting and on...
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The Right Things
“She’s not,” the Executive Director told me, “doing her job.” The she was the development director. The job she wasn’t doing, of course, was bringing in money. And no wonder. She was too busy...
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Motherhood and Apple Pie…and Nonprofit Boards
My first 4 years as a development professional was at a large university, where I was not at the level where I got to work with the Board of Trustees. Fundraising was completely staff driven, and the...
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Keeping An Open Mind
I am not an event person. I don’t like gala dinners, carnivals, poker nights. And I especially don’t like them as fundraisers. I think they are ineffective and costly. I believe that there are so...
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Building a Culture of Philanthropy
It was mid-summer, so my colleague Chuck Trione and I thought that the crowd would be small. Instead, more than 80 people showed up for our presentation on “How to Create a Culture of Philanthropy.”...
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The Obvious Donor
I often joke that the obvious eludes me. I tend to look for hidden pathways, arcane byways. It’s not that I think the obvious is bad, just that it is, well, obvious. Though I have come to realize...
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Adventures in Fundraising
A couple of years ago, feeling that we were falling into the comfortable habit of over-nesting, my husband and I agreed that when on vacation we’d have an adventure a day, and the rest of the year one...
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Fundraising—It’s Not Just About Asking and It’s Not Just Them Fundraising
It felt like death. The room had been lively, people talking and laughing. Eyes all bright; lots of smiles. Then the Board president says “Before get into the business end of the meeting, I’d like to...
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Board Retreat or Bored Retreat
I’m facilitating a couple of board retreats over the next few weeks, so I’ve been thinking about the differences between those that really work and those that…well, don’t work so well. In the former...
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Fundraising–It’s Not the Other Guy’s Job
A lot of nonprofits I’ve worked with over the years are sending me job descriptions for directors of development. For some, these are new positions; for others they are additions to. They are asking...
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Breaking Down Fundraising Barriers
Whenever I talk with Boards about the barriers they face in fundraising, it all comes down to act of asking someone for money. There is the fear of being told no; the fear that the person they are...
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Building Your Fundraising Board
They weren’t going to hit their fundraising goal. That was bad. They would have to make cuts. Okay I said, let’s evaluate what happened this year—and how we can make next year better. Me, ever the...
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Helping Your Boards to Fundraise
This year, perhaps your Board will really get it. Maybe this year, they will actually understand their fundraising role. Or maybe you will actually understand what you can and cannot expect—what your...
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The Specialty is Fundraising
On Thursday I am teaching a class focused on fundraising for education foundations. Last week I spoke with an arts organization who wanted to increase their fundraising capacity and didn’t hire me...
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Getting on the Bandwagon – The Failure of Fundraising
There has been so much written about the excellent report by Compass Point and the Hass Foundation, Underdeveloped, A National Study of Challenges Facing Nonprofit Fundraising that a big part of me...
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Don’t Decide For Your Donors
That sound—it’s a door slamming shut. And too often, the person doing the shutting is not who you think it might be. It’s not the prospect saying, “No, I don’t want to support your organization.”...
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Friends Don’t Ask Friends
When I ask board members what gets in the way of their fundraising, two things always always pop up: The fear of rejection and the fear of imposing on their friends. The first I get. I’ve spent the...
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