A backyard garden can produce delicious tomatoes one year and then struggle to produce any at all the next. A multi-national manufacturer, on the other hand, can produce the same product line year after year with a high level of precision. With our talk of “pipelines,” “moves management,” and “engagement scores,” we sometimes trick ourselves…
Author: Jason McNeal
I provide leadership, advancement and fundraising consulting services to educational, healthcare, and non-profit organizations.
What Are We Teaching Them?
If we seek to increase the overall number of donors, it makes sense to focus on increasing the number of first-time donors. To increase the number of first-time donors, we might choose to employ a token gift strategy. For example, we might offer branded socks or a t-shirt or some other tchotchke as a quid…
The Simple Reasons Why Donors Give
A few weeks ago, Sandy Weill, former Citigroup Chairman, and current Weill Family Foundation Chair, joined the folks on Squawk Box (CNBC) to announce a $50 million gift to the Weill Cornell Medical College. Squawk Box host Becky Quick, asked him, “why are you making the gift?” Without pausing he responded with 3 reasons: Longevity…
Wrong vs. Bounded
In some instances, we simply hold wrong beliefs. For example, we might believe that donors are motivated to give primarily when they see a direct and defined return on their support. We know this to be wrong, because research has shown repeatedly that donors give primarily when their personal values align with the cause or…
Brand Sentiment
The U.S. Stock Market can be intimidating. It can be hard to understand what it is and how it works, especially in times like these. The people who seem to know – financial talk show hosts and reporters, for example – tend to communicate in a different language. They regularly use words like, “puts,” and…
Touch and Connection
Quantum physics has taught us that we never really touch anything. What we think and feel related to touch is an illusion created in our minds to help us navigate the physical world. The seat you’re sitting on? Your rear is not really touching it. The keyboard in front of you? Your fingertips are not…
“Not What I Expected”
I listened as a relatively new gift officer relayed her experiences of visiting with donors during the first few months of her work. “It’s not what I expected,” she started. “People, even my corporate donors, are motivated to give because of our mission. They truly want to help. I honestly thought it would be more…
Caring More, Today and Tomorrow
Getting someone to show they care is a much different piece of work than getting someone who already cares to show they care more. If our goal is to get more folks to show they care, we should use donor acquisition metrics to gauge our success. How many donors did we add? We should recognize…
An Advancement Brand
Beyond your advancement mission statement (which should concisely describe what it is that you do as an advancement team), what is your advancement brand? As expressed as a tag line for your advancement team and program, you might come up with something like the following: “Generosity that inspires,” or, “Generosity that matters,” or, “Giving that…
Push vs. Pull
The concept of momentum in fundraising is real. In advancement, we talk about “campaign momentum,” or “engagement momentum,” or even “brand momentum.” While specific definitions are not easy to nail down, momentum is felt more than it is defined. As the old saying goes, “we know it when we feel it.” Nonetheless, momentum in its…