Giving is Good
True story. Yesterday, a major gifts officer at one of my clients received a call from the President’s office. Seemed the executive assistant had a man on hold who wanted to talk with someone about making a gift. The MGO took the call. Here’s what happened next. The man on the other end of the…
The gorgeously designed and perfectly-bound printed annual report was just mailed. It was a master-piece. It was a work of art. The VP’s pride directed him to fan out 5 copies of it on his coffee table in his office. And then his phone rang. It was Mrs. Donald, the lead gift donor during their…
My son, who is 6, likes to refer to any nice suit of clothes as “handsome clothes.” So, when I travel to visit with clients, or when we get ready for church, or head out for a nice event, he will ask me, “Daddy, which handsome clothes are you going to wear? I want to…
The ineffective advancement professional promotes their institution. The average advancement professional promotes what their institution does. The artful advancement professional promotes why their institution does it. Follow and share Jason’s Blog:
I recall some years ago working with a major donor who, after making it through the shuttering of one of his businesses and selling one of his four homes, said to me, “These days, I’m not feeling quite as wealthy as I used to.” His remark wasn’t born out of arrogance, he actually was a…
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…
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…
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 culture and history of our Board has never been to raise big dollars.” “Our endowment needs to be twice what it is currently, and we just don’t have the donors for that.” “We are in year 4 of our 5-year campaign and we still have 30% of the money to raise. We’ll never get…
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…