by Rebecca Davis | Oct 3, 2019 | Development Directors, Executive Directors, Fundraising, Leadership
When fundraising isn’t good, it is never [or almost never] simply the result of having an ineffective development professional. When fundraising isn’t strong, it’s because one or more of these things at your organization is broken, damaged, or failing. This isn’t to say that a good or bad fundraiser doesn’t matter; it’s simply that that isn’t the whole story (often it’s not even the biggest part of the story). The bad news here, also, is that a great fundraiser can’t fix fundraising when other fundamental organizational things are broken. Before you reach for a pink slip…
by Rebecca Davis | Oct 20, 2015 | Board of Directors, Executive Directors
MISSION MOMENTS: KEEPING YOUR BOARD CONNECTED
Are your board members missing meetings? Not showing up at events? Are your board members M.I.A.? Fear not! You can keep them engaged with mission moments.
by Rebecca Davis | Sep 15, 2015 | Development Directors, Executive Directors
It’s that time of year when many nonprofit organizations are working on the annual budget. An Executive Director friend, working on his budget, asked me if I could outline for him what types of expenses belong in a combined development, marketing, and communications budget. He wants to make sure that the Development Director at his organization has all the tools he needs in the budget to succeed.
Kudos to him! The reality is that it takes money to make money and my friend is wise to realize that. It won’t do any good to put a Development Director on your payroll if you don’t also provide him or her with a budget to work with. If you want your development director to solicit major gifts, for example, you need your development officer to be able to visit your major donors, to see them face to face and, unless your donors live inside your office building, that means needing a budget for travel.
Here are some things that a Development Director is going to need funding for and a template for a development budget.
by Rebecca Davis | Aug 12, 2015 | Culture of Philanthropy, Development Directors, Executive Directors
Signs Your Organization Lacks a Culture of Philanthropy – Part II
In an earlier post, I wrote about some of the ways that a board of directors reveals that an organization does not have a Culture of Philanthropy. Here I write about how some of an organization’s Executive Directors and staff members similarly make visible that an organization lacks a Culture of Philanthropy.
by Rebecca Davis | Aug 7, 2015 | Culture of Philanthropy, Development Directors, Executive Directors
Too many organizations want to treat fundraising as an add-on, like an extra appendage sewn onto the body. Imagine attaching a limb—say an arm—to the body, but not connecting it to the circulatory and nerve system and not re-wiring the brain to recognize the new arm. How uselessly it would flop around! Eventually, without blood, oxygen, and the protection of the nerve system, the limb would die.
For fundraising to work – that is, for fundraising to be done as sustained, donor-centric development, rather than as an episodic, short-term, organization-centered fundraising, fundraising requires changes with which many organizations are simply not comfortable.
If fundraising hasn’t been an integral part of the organization’s life from its beginning, it has to be skillfully grafted on in a way that wires it to the brain and connects it to the body’s major systems.
Here are my 13 Ways an Organization Reveals That It Is Not Serious about Fundraising
by Rebecca Davis | Aug 4, 2015 | Advocacy, Board of Directors, Books, Social Change
With the publication last week of BoardSource’s updated Ten Basic Responsibilities of Board Members, I’ve been thinking a lot about Crutchfield and Grant’s seminal Forces for Good book. The Ten Basic Responsibilities of Board Members list of the core, fundamental, legal responsibilities of a Board member has been gospel for all of us for many years. Most of us have relied on this list to orient our board members and to explain board members’ responsibilities for new members.
When BoardSource changed this list last week, BoardSource didn’t make the number of items on the list longer, but what it did do is determine that ADVOCACY is a core responsibility of Board Members. The responsibility to advocate for the mission is added to the first core responsibility (to determine an organization’s mission and purpose) and discussions of advocacy are added to several other responsibilities such as the responsibility to enhance an organization’s public standing.
