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…
Category: Leadership
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…
Mission Or Method
If your goal is to increase the amount of gift income you receive, you can: Ask new prospective donors to give for the first time; Ask past donors to give again; Ask current donors to give more. Those, really, are the only methods (or some combination of these 3) to increase gift income. Developing plans…
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…
3 Ways to Market Giving
“Marketing,” to an advancement professional almost always refers to the marketing of their institution’s programs and services. You market what you do. Or more importantly, the impact of what you do. You market your mission as a way to communicate the rightness and goodness of people giving in support of your institution’s efforts and outcomes. …
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 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. …
It’s All About The Donor, You, and . . . Who?
Just recently I was consulting with a university president when, in a moment of personal and professional transparency, he shared his lamentation that he had “gotten too close” to one of the institution’s most generous donors. I asked him what he meant by that and here was his all-too-familiar story. “I’m not quite sure how…