If you want to lead people – donors, team members, others at your institution – here are the 2 questions you should be able to answer: What are we doing? How are we going to do it? Most people can answer #1 – they know what they are doing. If you say, “what is your…
Author: Jason McNeal
I provide leadership, advancement and fundraising consulting services to educational, healthcare, and non-profit organizations.
Why Better Storytelling Won’t Lead to Larger Gifts
Leaders of institutions often share with me the following general frustration about communicating with donors and prospects: “We don’t tell our story well!” When probed, one (or more) of three underlying concerns almost always surfaces: A need to articulate more clearly, concisely, and authentically the positive “facts” of how the institution impacts students, patients, the…
Clicks Don’t Equal Engagement
The 2011 donorCentrics Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report was released last month. A lot of interesting info and findings from this research. Here are two key findings: More new donors aged 64 and younger give online as opposed to offline; With only 11% of online donors acquired in 2007 still giving in 2010, retention…
A Culture of Freedom
Yesterday, the United States observed Independence Day. This pausing in the life of the country is designed to encourage reflection and celebration of independence from oppressive rule and individual freedom. Ok, we all understand what July 4th is about. But what about your development shop? How “free” is it? Here are 3 questions to ask…
The Outcomes That Matter
Think about the following scenario: You log into your yahoo news page and click on a story about someone who has just lost their home. The story is a vivid, personal account of a hardworking woman who lost her good-paying job in the economic downturn and, after 9 months of no job, ended up taking…
The Fives Things Department Chairs Need to Know About Fundraising
If you serve an academic institution, check out my recent interview with Academic Impressions’ Higher Ed Impact. I’m discussing the five most important things department chairs need to know about development work. This is a follow-up to an interview I gave them last year. Development is about education. Sometimes we educate donors, other times we…
Calling All Advancement Leaders
Are you an advancement leader at your institution? Do you aspire to move up and become an advancement leader? If so, you will want to attend this upcoming workshop – Leading To Make A Difference. The Workshop is sponsored by GGTS and I’m serving as the keynote speaker. You will want to attend if: You’ve…
Trusting Donors
In development circles we don’t talk much about trust. We when talk about donors we focus on words like “asking,” “strategies,” “engagement,” or “building relationships” (which, oddly, never seems to involve the concept of trust). But we don’t regularly focus on the need for trust. There are few, if any, conferences focused on “building…
Slower Can Be Better
Remember the sound of the dial-up modem? “eeeee-awwwwwww-eeeeeeeeee?” For a major donor I interviewed recently, that sound was music to his ears. During the “dial-up” period of our internet life, you may also recall that new modems with faster and faster speeds were being introduced about every 2 months. Everyone wanted to go faster so…
Are Volunteers Worth The Effort?
Recently, I listened as a well-respected higher education advancement leader say that using volunteers in the advancement function was mostly ineffective. Today’s advancement shops, she argued, are staffed with professionals who are well-trained with specific skills making the use of volunteers obsolete. Even during campaigns, her position was that campaign cabinets and other volunteer groups…