Stress Management Tips & Techniques For Development Officers
Raising money is a rewarding and fulfilling profession if you ask many of the successful men and women who ask for funds on a daily basis. Nonprofits, whether they are in business to help one individual, one child, one animal, or to transform society, give development officers reasons to be proud and feel purposeful inRead More Stress Management Tips & Techniques For Development Officers
Let’s Hear It For The “51 Percenters”!
Anyone who’s around me for any period of time will learn quickly that I enjoy dining out. While I don’t consider myself a full-fledged “foodie,” I do appreciate cuisines of all types. However, while the execution of the food is very important, the quality of the service is probably more important to me. As anyRead More Let’s Hear It For The “51 Percenters”!
Six Degrees of Fundraising
It happened to me again yesterday in a meeting. I had traveled to another city conduct a Campaign Strategy Study with a young couple. Before even sitting down in their living room, I was quizzing the couple about their professional backgrounds, their connection to the organization – warm up questions – when I happened to mentionRead More Six Degrees of Fundraising
The Benefits Of Challenge And Matching Gifts
The utilization of challenge and matching gifts remains a very good strategy for securing more gifts and larger gifts. The influencing power of these gifts is multifaceted. These gifts are motivating to those being challenged. They want to help the organization secure the full challenge or, in the case of the matching gift, add toRead More The Benefits Of Challenge And Matching Gifts
The Importance Of Closing The Ask
Have you closed a gift today? As fundraising consultants, we spend a lot of our time talking about (wait for it – big surprise!) FUNDRAISING. Fundraising always prompts for me a mental picture of raising a house—laying the foundation, building the walls, cutting out spaces for the windows and doors and chimney (because any houseRead More The Importance Of Closing The Ask
Making A Measurable Difference
“It is more difficult to give away money intelligently than to earn it in the first place.” Thus said Andrew Carnegie in his 1889 essay, The Gospel of Wealth. I was reminded of this quote by some students whom I had the good fortune to encounter on a cold January day in a warm classroom.Read More Making A Measurable Difference
When It Comes To Metrics, What Does Not Get Measured Does Not Get Done
We have spent a lot of time over the last several years helping organizations establish metrics to measure the development office and staff performance against a set of standards. Often these standards are based on what peers are doing and on some “best practices” in development. But often, what these metrics lack are 1) andRead More When It Comes To Metrics, What Does Not Get Measured Does Not Get Done
Utilizing Your Gift Officers To Their Highest Capacity
In conversation with development professionals and from the many development assessments my colleagues and I at Alexander Haas have done, I am constantly reminded that no office has sufficient field officers to secure major, planned and leadership annual gifts. It’s just a fact of life. That only serves to amplify our need to make sureRead More Utilizing Your Gift Officers To Their Highest Capacity
2014 Resolution: Database Segmentation
Our friends at Blackbaud put together a nice, insightful e-newsletter last year to get us thinking about what we need to focus on in the New Year. It’s called Utilize Your Year-end Momentum: Kickstart 2013 Fundraising. This year, the guide still rings true for your 2014 fundraising, so take a look and see where youRead More 2014 Resolution: Database Segmentation
Tis the Season of Giving Thanks
I don’t know about you, but it seems to me like the holiday season began back in September this year. There were ornaments on sale before my Labor Day leftovers were gone, the halls were decked before Halloween arrived, and the traffic around Lenox and Phipps has been gridlocked since October. Also of note, I’veRead More Tis the Season of Giving Thanks
