What is the truth at your institution? Is it what you believe about your institution and its work? Or is it what your donors and constituents believe about your institution?
If you are like many advancement pros, you spend a good amount of time and energy strategizing on how best to tell your institution’s story. The lives transformed. The communities uplifted. The good work and the statistics that evidence it all. The more compelling you can make it all sound, the better.
But maybe it doesn’t much matter what you believe and say about your institution. No matter how compelling and inspiring you make the stories.
Maybe it matters more what your donors and other constituents believe and say about your institution. Maybe it is their stories that really matter. Maybe the truth – the only truth that really matters in your work – can be found in their stories and perceptions of our institution.
It has never been about us. It will always be about them. People give not because of our needs, but because of their own. What matters is their truth, not our version of it. Find out what they think and say about your institution and then you can tell the compelling truth.
