You may recall some year’s back, the experiment in which the task is to count how many times the players wearing white passed the basketball. If you have not seen the video or do not know about the purpose of the study by Chabris and Simons, click the link now and participate. Focus on…
Category: Fundraising
Donor Engagement as Coaching
Last night, Pat Summitt, the legendary women’s basketball coach from the University of Tennessee received the Arthur Ashe Award for Courage at the ESPY awards. If you missed the live broadcast, you would do well to take a few minutes and watch the video here. For those that may not know, Coach Summitt recently retired…
Searching for the Major Donor Higgs Boson
Last week, to international scientific acclaim, physicists from Geneva’s CERN announced they had discovered a new subatomic particle which holds the promise to help explain all life on earth. The Higgs boson particle – or the “God Particle” as it has become known – has been theorized since the 1960s. But it wasn’t until a mountain’s…
The Human Storyline
Advancement professionals regularly are looking for ways to “better tell our institution’s story.” I have written in the past about how better storytelling alone won’t lead to larger gifts. Instead, I’ve suggested that the concept of story-listening is a much better way to go about attracting larger gifts. It is the donor’s story that is…
A Report on Reports
Bruce Cameron is credited with the quote, “Not everything that can be counted counts. And not everything that counts can be counted.” In the world of measuring and evaluating development officer performance, we have many variables which we could employ to judge effectiveness. But just because we can track something and report it, doesn’t mean that we…
The Bad Recordings In Your Head
Recently, I visited with one of our newest consultants at Gonser Gerber, Robert Driver. Robert has a long history of both healthcare and higher education experience in development and he made an interesting point as we were talking about how we can help development leaders become more effective. He said: “I think a lot of…
The ROIs of Advisory Boards
If your institution is like most, members of your advancement team help to plan, implement, and engage an advisory board of some sort. Perhaps it is an alumni board, a parents’ council, an programmatic advisory board, or an institution-wide advisory board. Whatever the form, these groups take valuable time, energy, and resources from the staff…
Helping Others See The Whole Triangle
You are in year 3 of a 5 year campaign. Things have gone well to date, the Quiet Phase exceeded goals. But now, suddenly there has been a slowdown in commitments. Perhaps a major gift proposal wasn’t fully funded. Perhaps you received a “not right now” answer from another prospect. And, perhaps, there are at…
The Myth of Quality Time
My wife and I are parents of an eight year old and a six year old. When I was studying the family-work dynamic in graduate school, I became very familiar with the research and positions associated with the “quality time versus quantity of time” argument of child rearing. You know the argument. The idea is…
Showing Interest vs. Seeking Interest
If you think your job is to get donors and prospects more interested in your institution, you’ve got it backwards. You will close many more gifts by showing authentic interest in your prospects than you will by working to get them interested in your institution. It’s our job to show interest, not seek it. When…