One of the by-products of our digitally-connected age is the waning value of expertise. The growing understanding today is that the everyone’s right to express an opinion is synonymous with the notion that everyone’s opinion is equally informed. Medical doctors and research scientists have been publicly second-guessed by celebrities with influence but no medical training…
Category: Leadership
“How Many?” versus “How Deeply?”
For many institutions, the concept of “advancement performance metrics” can be boiled down to a collection of quantifiable goals that represent some number more than last year’s. For instance, you may have a metric for an increased number of $1,000 donors. Or, you may have a metric for an increased number of “moves,” or “visits”…
Customer or Community Member
If people talk about your institution as “being a community” (or words to that effect) and yet, you don’t consistently ask people to give of themselves and their resources, you are only talking about community, you don’t have community. Many institutions behave toward their constituents as if they were customers, not community members. Customers are…
The 3 Most Damaging Fund Raising Myths – Part III
Note: This post is part III of a series of III in which I identify 3 separate fund raising myths that make us less productive. The first installment in this series focused on the myth of donors giving only (or substantially more) for restricted purposes. The second post discussed the myth that case statements which focus…
A Hypothetical Letter to a Non-Profit Board Member
Dear Board Member: I am back in my office having just completed our most recent Board meeting. As I reflect on our work together in support of our institution’s mission and vision, a number of thoughts are occurring to me. The most important of these thoughts, I believe, involve offering my sincere thanks and an…
The Tyranny of Knowing
What do you know about your work? I mean, really know? The reality is that we all believe we know a lot more than we actually do. In fact, in all facets of life, we walk through situations believing we have more knowledge than we do. It’s part of being human. Each day our brains…
Guilt or Grace
Which culture characteristic animates your advancement team’s efforts? While there are a number of ways to assess team culture, assessing your team’s placement on the “Guilt or Grace Continuum” can lead to helpful understandings. In the Guilt Culture, the fundamental assumption is that an organization gets better when problems or gaps in performance are identified…
3 Differences Between Nonprofit and For-Profit Boards
Nonprofit organizations, including colleges, universities, and schools, seek financially-successful, influential, and generous individuals to serve as governing board members. In seeking individuals who fit this profile, nonprofits will regularly pull from a pool of successful for-profit leaders. Not only do many leaders in the for-profit world have access to significant financial resources, they also can…
What Are You More Afraid Of?
Setting goals and not meeting them OR Realizing that your work isn’t important; Not knowing the right answer OR Not knowing the best questions to ask; Feeling as though you have failed OR Feeling as though you didn’t try hard enough; Being made fun of OR Being unable to make a significant difference; Giving your…
“This Needs To Be Run More Like A Business!”
Recently, I facilitated a focus group populated with private higher education governing board members. One slice of the discussion included a board member lamenting, “Our business model in higher education is broken. I simply do not understand why our tuition and fees are not sufficient to cover our costs. We need to be run more…