The best stories don’t teach people anything new. Instead, the best stories agree with what the audience already believes and makes the members of the audience feel smart and secure when reminded how right they were in the first place. – Seth Godin… [Read more…]
In every nonprofit that we council for fundraising and development, we provide tips, techniques, and training on how to ask for money. Whether we are talking to staff, board or committee members, we know there is a lot of fear around the ask. … [Read more…]
Do you have a culture of giving? Or should I ask, do you have a culture of asking? While nonprofits want givers, few people want to be askers. And that is often the sticking point. Common excuses include: “We don’t have those kind… [Read more…]
Last week, I wrote asked, and answered, What Makes a Successful Fundraising Campaign? In the list of essential tasks for volunteers and staff, I included, “follow up after each appointment.” I didn’t want this to get lost because follow up from volunteers will,… [Read more…]
Last week I went to a conference where I saw phenomenal speakers. The list included Michelle Obama, Billie Jean King, Selina Tobaccowala, Brit Marling, Issa Rae, Mario Batali and Andy Cohen. The topics ranged from the experience of being the former FLOTUS (or… [Read more…]
While at the gym the other day I overheard a woman ask a teenager on the treadmill next to her if she had an extra hairband, mentioning that she had left hers at home. They didn’t know each other but the teenager had… [Read more…]
No doubt, people have had trouble listening for thousands of years. Sure, while modern technology makes it easy to multi-task (and thereby decrease focus on the primary task at hand), I have a feeling the cave people were as easily distracted by a… [Read more…]
My family recently got a puppy. Training her, as we have been told, is actually an exercise in training the people in the family. Interestingly, one of my daughters has no assertiveness when she is around the dog (that is not true of… [Read more…]
Recently, I have become aware of a theory called rejection therapy. The idea is that to overcome the fear of rejection you ask for seemingly preposterous things and eventually, you will be immune to the rejection and focused on how to turn the… [Read more…]
A few weeks ago I wrote Part I of what I experienced and learned when I looked back at my first year as the chair of a fundraising committee. Two themes surfaced through the year. The first was how to ask donors for… [Read more…]