Creating more strategic, financially savvy, and confident nonprofit leaders and organizations.
Last week I led a planning call among the panelists on the “Supporting Nonprofit Sustainability” session I am moderating at April’s Center for Effective Philanthropy conference (which I described in an earlier post). One of the panelist suggested that we start the session by defining what we mean by “nonprofit sustainability.” As we started to discuss […]
Beyond the mistakes nonprofit leaders often make in staffing their fundraising function, the relationship itself between a nonprofit executive director and the development director (or whatever you call the staff person in charge of bringing money in the door) can often be fraught. In an ideal world, the executive director and development director have a symbiotic […]
I was speaking to a group of nonprofit leaders recently about how to Move from Fundraising to Financing, and when I came to the part about events, the room went predictably quiet. Looks of shock shot around the room. Events are so ubiquitous in the nonprofit sector, how could I possibly say they have little financial value? It […]
My hope in creating the growing library of Social Velocity videos is that nonprofit leaders will use the topics as a jumping off point for honest discussions with boards and donors. It can often be intimidating for a nonprofit leader to raise a controversial question like: “Should all board members be required to fundraise?” “Should we stop worrying […]
One of the reasons fundraising can be so exhausting is that nonprofit leaders spend too much time chasing small gifts, or relying too heavily on government contracts with too many hurdles. One way to diversify and grow a nonprofit’s financial model is to attract more major donors. And I’m not just talking about major individual donors. […]
There is such a hunger in the nonprofit sector for help wrangling the board of directors. Because the board is a disparate group of volunteers, it can often seem impossible to get their attention, let alone get them all pointing in the same, effective direction. This is even more true in fundraising. But if you […]
I wrote last month about the crippling nonprofit fear of investment. Related to that, nonprofits need to understand and embrace the concept of Return on Investment. Nonprofit leaders often exist in such a world of scarcity that they don’t recognize that an investment today can have a huge payoff down the road. And not recognizing […]
There’s a key practice in business marketing, creating buyer personas, that I think nonprofit fundraisers would be wise to adopt. It is a great fallacy of nonprofit fundraisers to think that anyone with money is a potential donor to their organization. Nothing could be further from the truth. If you want to really succeed in […]
A new report from the Dorothy A. Johnson Center for Philanthropy and 21/64 gives us the first real glimpse into the minds of the next generation of philanthropists, and it’s fascinating. These are not your father’s philanthropists. Millennial and GenX donors (wealthy individuals, or individuals who will inherit wealth, born between 1964-2000) will control more […]
I’ve written before about when nonprofit fundraising goes really wrong. An organization that I donated to a few times refused to leave me alone after 11 years of ignored solicitations. Today I want to flip it and talk about a nonprofit that has done a great job at fundraising. (In some ways they mirror my […]
I can’t tell you how often I hear nonprofit leaders complain about how difficult it is to raise money, how tired they are of banging their head against the wall, how difficult this economy is. Well, there really is a better way. And it starts with a really good money plan for your organization. But […]
