Giving is Good
Recently, the Chronicle of Philanthropy reported that the calendar year is off to a strong philanthropic start. According to a survey of selected large charities, the median increase in giving during the first quarter of 2010 as compared to a year ago is 11%! Not bad. I’m not an economist, so I can’t say with…
Recently, I was talking with a friend – a younger, thoughtful donor with capacity (a HENRY, actually). Here was his message to me: “My wife and I are getting overwhelmed by all the solicitations from non-profits – world tragedies like earthquakes, to education institutions, to health-care organizations – it’s just too much. We used to…
Do you know HENRY? Better yet, are you educating HENRY? HENRY is an acronym, first coined in a 2003 Fortune magazine article. It stands for High Earner, Not Rich Yet donors. Typically, HENRY donors are early in the major gift cycle, somewhere between 35-50 years of age. They make $250k+ per year. Their kids attend private…
“The pathetic person in the world is someone who has sight, but has not vision.” – Helen Keller Leadership, regardless of title, evidences many characteristics. Perhaps the most important characteristic is having vision – the kind that Helen Keller speaks of in the above quote. Having vision means having a picture of how your advancement…
The man who removes a mountain, does so by carrying away small stones – Chinese proverb “We’d like for you to consider a gift of $500,000 to help fund our new Center for Global Awareness. . .” These words (or similar ones) are written or said everyday by volunteers and development leaders. But in most…
We are practicing our craft well when we understand that our fundamental role as development professionals is not to ask for gifts, but, instead, to create environments which encourage generosity. Once we get to this place of effective practice, a good question might be: “In the situations where an ask must occur, who is in…
There is a central career question that we all must grapple with: “What do you care more about — doing something or being someone?” – a mentor We should all have life goals – personal and professional goals that we aim to achieve over the course of some period of time. The most important reason…
Our friends in the airline and hotel industries have been doing something for years that makes a good amount of sense to me. They reward those customers who choose them regularly. Frequent-flier programs and frequent-stay programs are so successful that now customers can earn free airline tickets by using their affinity credit cards at…
Many years ago as a young development officer I naively decided to probe a bit when an upset alum donor said to me: “I’m not pleased with the direction of the institution and I’m going to withhold my giving until things change.” The specifics of the situation are unimportant. It could have been that she…
When I was in graduate school, I had on my committee Dr. Norma Mertz, a wonderfully blunt New Yorker. Not only was she blunt, but her insight was exceptional. When she listened to a student discuss a possible dissertation topic, one of her favorite ways to bring clarity to rambling was to firmly (and sometimes…