Your case for support is about you. It shouldn’t be. Somewhere on your shared drive there is a document called something like “Case for Support — FINAL v6.” Fourteen pages. It opens with the year you were founded. There’s a section on your theory of change, a paragraph on your executive director’s last three jobs, […]

You’re not in the relationship business. You’re in the transaction business. Fundraising is a relationship business. It’s in the training, the keynote, the white paper, the job posting, the opening slide, the board retreat icebreaker, and the exit interview of every development director who was just told she wasn’t the right fit. Nobody argues with […]

This week, somewhere on LinkedIn, a consultant posted a hot take. It doesn’t matter which week. It is always this week. “Hot take: keeping the donors you already have matters more than chasing new ones.” Four hundred likes. Ninety comments, most of them some variation of “say it louder.” A dozen reposts from development officers tagging […]

What Boards Approve and Donors Pay For The sector just hit a record $617 billion in charitable giving. Donor participation fell again. Both of those things are true, and most nonprofit leaders are only paying attention to one of them. That’s not an accident. That’s a choice. The Setup I’ve watched some version of the […]

The problem is the development director who hasn’t made a thank-you call in three weeks because she spent the afternoon in a meeting about a tool that costs more than her stewardship budget — a meeting she was in because her executive director wanted to know why they aren’t doing what some other organization just […]