I am privileged to be part of a journey supporting a client in their ambitious $100 million campaign, and the success they are achieving is nothing short of remarkable. Such a campaign is usually a challenging feat for any organization, let alone a new organization that started the campaign with fewer than 30 donors in its database.  When I reflect on their extraordinary success, something stands out to me that sets them apart in the world of fundraising: their clear and compelling vision. While many organizations tout lofty and aspirational vision statements, there’s often a disconnect b ..read more

I have had the privilege of actively contributing to the strategic planning initiatives of several remarkable organizations. Throughout this journey, I’ve identified five common challenges within nonprofit strategic planning and have crafted effective solutions to guide my clients in steering clear of these potential pitfalls: Problem: Strategic Plan as a Marketing Tool The strategic plan often transforms into a mere fundraising and marketing artifact, losing its essence as a tool for informed decision-making. In such instances, it becomes little more than an aesthetically pleasing PDF showcas ..read more

In my quest to make donor trips and site visits more equitable, effective, and empathy-enabling, I have poured over research. Every once in a while, I find a great piece of academic research that has immediate and practical application in our daily work. In this article, I share some of the best research on experience and empathy from my colleagues in anthropology, and I help you contextualize it so that you can immediately begin applying what you’ve learned to your programs. This article is derived from the work of anthropologist Dean MacCannell, who put for three “Modalities of the Urban Sym ..read more

As a principle ethical storytelling, I often stress the importance of honoring our contributors’ terminology, and using they words they use to describe themselves and their experiences. Sometimes we use words are not widely used in the English language, and a common thing to do is italicize them so the reader doesn’t confuse them for English words. This article will make the case for reconsidering italicizing words from other languages, and will provide a tip on what to do instead. Last year when I attended The Educational Travel Consortium, I had the pleasure of hearing Sarah Juckniess o ..read more

After two years of a pause in travel for most organizations, it is clear by now that the industry has rebounded, with demand returning before supply can even catch up. This past year I’ve seen donor trips fill faster than ever, with little signs of that trend slowing down in 2023. With such overwhelming demand, it can be tempting to offer your trip to the first people who raise their hands, but that’s not the most strategic approach. Here are 4 ways of filling a trip, including the pros, cons, and how to maximize impact.  Here I start in order of strategic priority, from greatest to least ..read more

“Caliopy Glares has a unique, proven, and well curated approach to setting meeting goals, facilitating discussions skillfully and delivering an experience that engages not only participants’ minds but also their hearts and passion for the meeting agenda at hand.  She has an expert skill – albeit innate! – in tailoring her work for each client and group. Her work with our Executive Advisory Council’s mid-year planning meeting in Northern Ireland resulted in accolades from all participants as one of the most productive EAC meetings ever.  Caliopy’s pre-meeting discussions proved inval ..read more

Campaign messages like “we are the voice for the children” and “we are the voice for the poor” are all too common. Those people already have their own voices (however they express themselves, be it though auditory speech or another means)…. Whether they are “heard” is another matter. My point is, being the metaphorical voice for another means we are speaking on behalf of our story contributors, the people our organization serves, but that is not what we are doing, or is not what we should be doing. We are more like a metaphorical microphone, amplifying their messages. Considering yourself in t ..read more

I’ve written a lot about how utilizing empathy requires that we not project our own perceptions, assumptions, and desires on to others. While the general public seems to think “empathy” means feeling exactly what another person feels; we often don’t know how another person feels because we are actually  just projecting what we would feel in another person’s situation. This problem gets compounded when we, as story gatherers and curators for our nonprofit organizations, project assumptions onto our clients – the storytellers and onto our audiences. In this work it is im ..read more

I‘ve been consulting on donor trips for a while now, and have come across a fair share of assumptions and ill-informed beliefs. In this article, I spell out the most common myths and misconceptions I have encountered…and saved the very best for last. 1. Donor trips have low retention. Like any event, donor trips attract both those who may be good prospects for our organizations and those who may not. Consider, for example, when a major donor wants to fill a trip with their friends and family. They may not be thinking about whether those people would be motivated to give to your organization—th ..read more

As fundraising and marketing staff, you understand the why of donor trips, but a challenge you may still face is convincing your colleagues in the program department why they should take time to participate in a donor trip. (If you are wondering how program staff should and shouldn’t be involved in donor trips, see articles here and here.) The ask of program staff may be as big as hosting a weeklong trip or as small as giving a sixty-minute presentation to donors at the local office, but I have heard of pushback either way. The sentiment of many staff members is: “We are on the front lines doi ..read more