Supermarkets price milk and eggs (and turkeys during Thanksgiving) below, at, or just above their cost. These items (and others) are called “loss leaders” or “leader priced items.” Every time you buy milk or eggs, your local supermarket is, most likely, losing money on that transaction. If one were to analyze a supermarket’s value by…
Category: Development
Being The Proposer
It’s easy to critique. It’s more difficult to create. It can feel less burdensome to evaluate. And far more arduous to produce. It can seem safer to be the respondent. And more vulnerable to be the proposer. But being the creator, the producer, the proposer, is a role the very best advancement leaders are willing…
A Brighter Light
We often work in dim light. There are questions to every problem we are working on for which we don’t yet have clarity. Sometimes important questions. And sometimes the problems themselves are important. You may be finalizing a direct mail piece. How many segments of that solicitation should you employ to get the highest…
The Real Change That’s Coming Post-COVID-19
We should all be imagining how advancement work will be rearranged, adjusted, and altered post-COVID-19. It’s easy to think of remote-work or work-from-home norms as becoming commonplace policy, especially for gift officers. The integration of video conferencing and digital technologies with in-person, human-to-human donor engagement is another aspect of our work which, most likely, will…
Giving Is Greater Than The Gift
The first 5 months of 2020 have been distressing. An understatement, I am aware. Just as the world was beginning to understand how to “re-open” safely from the COVID-19 virus and its vicious health and financial calamities, we were faced over the last week with an even tougher test – one squarely confronting the perceptions…
The Day-Trading Boss
If you haven’t yet worked for him or her, you probably will at some point. He’s the VP who focuses more on metrics than on the relationships and processes the metrics are there to measure. She’s the President who wants to know why gift officers aren’t asking for major gifts during a first meeting. Day-traders…
What Am I Doing?
The world is filled with leaders in every industry (including advancement/development) who rarely ask themselves this important question. Posers, caring more about the perception of leadership than the practice of it, almost never ask this question. Even still, some are able to ascend to high-level, leadership posts (again, yes, even in advancement/development). It doesn’t matter…
This Next Year. . . And Beyond
Today marks the first work day of 2020. And, while there is some measure of confusion, today also marks the first work day of the new decade – the decade of the ’20s. Every New Year holiday brings with it the time and opportunity to reflect on the past and plan for the future. A…
The Most Important “Impact” of Giving Is Not What You Think
With the dawn of another U.S. Thanksgiving holiday just days away, we will soon welcome the commencement of the official “season of giving.” The month of December will experience millions of donors acting with great generosity and each year at this time I am reminded of the concept of philanthropic impacts. Specifically, and, it seems,…
The Nuanced (But Key) Lesson Behind Robert F. Smith’s Gift
Amid all of the publicity regarding Robert F. Smith’s announcement to repay the student loan balances for each of the Morehouse College graduates a Sunday ago, there is a key lesson to ferret out, if advancement and nonprofit leaders are willing to look (and listen) closely. Yes, the gift is wonderful and should be applauded. …