Donors are looking for a better philanthropic value proposition.  They want to know how their dollars will be turned into differences. Traditional fundraising loses four out of five first-time donors. They give. Nothing changes. They move on. Traditional fundraising works best at places that have delivered value and built community but the organizational self-centeredness on which it is based misses many partnership-building opportunities. Donors say, “Show me the impact.” Fundraisers clamor for more compelling concepts. Traditional fundraising is a hand-off function, a job delegate ..read more

“It doesn’t make sense to hire smart people and then tell them what to do. We hire smart people so they can tell us what to do.’” – Steve Jobs, Co-Founder of Apple Ahhh, leadership. When you have great leadership, the progress, growth, joy, and unity you feel is unlike anything else. This is true for nonprofits as well as any other organization or venture. Unfortunately, bad leadership in fundraising has the opposite effect. Just one or two poor leaders can derail whole organizations and discourage everyone involved, sending them fleeing for the exits. Of course, there’s a lot of middle groun ..read more

Lead with a gift: The primal-giving game Biologists model sustainable giving in nature with a game.[1] This primal-giving game models reciprocal altruism.[2] What’s the best strategy in this game? To answer this question one professor held an international computer gaming tournament. With many rounds and many players, strategies got complicated. How complicated? He explains, “An example is one which on each move models the behavior of the other player as a Markov process, and then uses Bayesian inference to select what seems the best choice for the long run.”[3] So, what worked? When – as in n ..read more

I didn’t know I should be asking this one question when talking to donors: “When would be a good time for me to follow up?” For some of you that were trained by some major gift legend that was successful and had the time to teach you, this might be super obvious! But for me, the one major gift person at an organization, I had no idea to ask it. I would make an ask during a visit and then we would leave. This began the awkward, unclear process of what would happen next. I’d just wait… and wait… and wait some more until a check arrived in the mail or at some point I’d muster up the courage to c ..read more

Why do gift officers quit their jobs so frequently? Gift officer turnover is holding so many nonprofit organizations back. And not just in terms of the higher revenue they could be bringing in. It’s also holding them back in their internal culture. Gift officers are feeling burned out, ignored, pressured, and that their time is being wasted. Some experienced major gift officers have seen the same donor prospects interact with up to 15 different MGOs over the course of their years of involvement with the organization. This is not the way to develop or sustain mutually healthy, productive, and ..read more

So much of standard fundraising practice is inconsistent with philanthropic partnership building. Would you enter into, feel comfortable with, or stay in a partnership if you learned: You had been profiled “Moves” were being planned without your knowledge Records of meetings had been filed that you were not privy to An agenda had been worked up beforehand that you were expected to go along with Of course not. Why do we do such things in the name of fundraising when it is so obvious that they would not work and would be considered manipulative if done at an interpersonal level or in a busin ..read more

In nature, giving to unrelated others can be sustainable. But it requires some form of reciprocity. This need not be immediate. It need not be proportional. It can be a different size or type. It can occur much later. But it starts by answering a question: Who is able and willing to return a favor? Answering this simple question can get complex. Able and willing As seen in the last article, predicting who is able involves many factors: Who is likely to have a shared future with me? (Who is near me? Who is stable?) Who has strength (or other valuable resources) to share? Who can observe my gi ..read more

Nobody gives when they feel the professionals working for an organization or institution dislike them. I’m writing this today because I’m constantly befuddled when I see some fundraisers or nonprofit leaders post messages on social media (such as LinkedIn) that essentially complain about wealthy people. Some of these posts insinuate that most wealthy people gained what they’ve got through ill-gotten means. Or, they lambast philanthropists for giving to one cause instead of another that the fundraiser believes is more deserving. The reality is that most wealthy people are the first people in t ..read more

It starts with a question In nature, sustainable giving to unrelated others does occur. But it happens only with reciprocal alliances. These alliances start by answering a question: Who is able and willing to return a favor? Predicting who is able involves many factors: Who is likely to have a shared future with me? (Who is near me? Who is stable?) Who has strength (or other valuable resources) to share? Who can observe my giving? Answering these gets complex. But biologists often model these using a simple game.[1] The primal-giving game The game is this. Two unrelated players both face the ..read more

Everyone Is entitled to their own fundraising opinions but not their own fundraising facts. That’s what the brilliant Daniel Patrick Moynihan said, without the reference to fundraising, of course. And imagine how much more we could achieve if we did a better job of aligning fundraising strategy with fundraising fact. The trouble is that so many people come into this field or sector with presupposition, wishful thinking and, in some cases, varying degrees of delusion. One of the more persistent myths attempts to equate giving behaviors with wealth and by extension, tax breaks. As you can see b ..read more