Here are some behaviors that point to a troubling financial future ahead for your institution:
Your institution is investing more (more people, more financial resources, etc.) in “marketing” as opposed to investing more in traditional development efforts.
During Board meetings, your institution’s Board is awkward about or doesn’t easily and regularly have open discussions about their own giving (i.e., reviewing the percentage of Board members who have given this fiscal year, talking about planned giving options for Board members, etc.).
Your institution’s administrative leaders spend so much time on operational issues or on other institutional drama and decisions that they complain there isn’t enough time get out of the office to visit with major donors, funding partners, or other influential supporters.
Your institution’s culture doesn’t transparently value giving and generosity as critical threads in the fabric of institutional community.
Your advancement team is diminishing the use of “legacy channels” for annual giving (i.e., direct mail and phonathons) because “people just don’t read or use the phone anymore.”
Your institution’s CFO thinks their role is to police all of the spending throughout the institution as opposed to thinking their role is to establish and implement the process for annual budget creation.
Your institution doesn’t have a consistent history of implementing a donor recognition and thank-you event each year (especially focused recognizing and thanking leadership annual givers, cumulative major givers, and planned givers).
If left unchecked long enough, these indicators will cause serious financial harm to your institution’s ability to fulfill its mission.
Problems won’t emerge all at once from any of these indicators. But, if these types of behaviors, beliefs, and approaches aren’t addressed and rooted out, at some point, the problems will feel like they emerged all at once.
2025 seems like a great time to start making some adjustments.
