Fundraising Leadership ™

Executive Coaching, Leadership Training, and Personal Development

Three Skills That Make You a Better Fundraiser

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 I am having a conversation with a potential donor. I love the initiative I’m fundraising for, but the meeting is not going particularly well. It isn’t my first meeting with this person, but I don’t feel like we are connecting today.

I spent a ridiculous number of hours prepping for this meeting because I thought this guy would have many questions for me. Nope. Nada. Zilch. And I had a whole script prepared, but it doesn’t feel right anymore.

I suspect I’m losing his attention. His cell phone is face down on the table; he hasn’t picked it up yet, but he’s looking at it longingly.

Even seasoned fundraisers can have rough meetings, meetings where our plans to present our worthy work go off the rails.  Coaching skills can help during these difficult situations

Our culture seems to agree.  Coaching skills are suitable for anyone who manages people, leads teams, and … is on the frontline of fundraising.

There are three skills that make you a better fundraiser (and leader). [Read more…]

Three Ways to Balance Fundraising and Leadership Priorities

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We all aspire to achieve great things, this means different things to different people. I was always focused on leading a team. I love working with people and more specifically, I love the energy that is created when I am engaged in inspirational conversations. It is for this reason that I consider myself lucky to be a professional fundraiser and even luckier to be leading a team of very accomplished and highly competent fundraisers. But there is a challenge that exists for many Directors in non profit organizations, and I believe it is an unspoken challenge. It is the trifecta effect, the challenge of leading your team, the challenge of working your own fundraising portfolio and the challenge of reporting up to the CEO. It is the curse I suppose of middle management, but it is not often discussed or addressed. It is for this reason that I’d like to share some of the strategies I have adapted over the years to deal with the aforementioned challenge. [Read more…]

Corporate Sponsorship: Get Clear and Think BIG

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Corporate Sponsorship photo of moneyLet’s get right to the point. Corporate sponsorship and corporate philanthropy are not the same. They are different—very different. And no matter which one you are considering, you probably aren’t thinking creatively enough.

Typically, philanthropy is done by individuals, not companies, but some companies still give for the sake of giving expecting nothing in return. Actually, that is philanthropy, especially when it comes to the Canada Revenue Agency or IRS. Philanthropy, or a donation by a company, is a gift made to a charity with no expectation of anything in return—no event passes or tickets to a gala, no logo inclusion, banners, tweets, or posts. Nothing! Zilch! Nada! Philanthropy comes from the heart; donations should be altruistic. [Read more…]

What is a “Personal Board of Directors?”

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board room table with brown leather chairsMentorship is an evergreen topic of discussion amongst leaders and those aspiring to it. Wonderfully, today the conversation continues to evolve to intersect with issues of equity, diversity and inclusion to unpack the need for not just formal mentorship, but sponsorship and organizational responsibility.

But for many who work either alone, freelance or are just not supported at work, this is a journey they must take personal responsibility for. I firmly believe that in fact, any professional who cares deeply about their career needs to cultivate a healthy “third space” outside of work and home life. A professional sphere where they are not defined by their job title or technical capabilities. For me, a new world was opened up when I read the work of Dorie Clark pushing past the scarcity of the “gig economy” and instead proposing that we are all consultants now ( since hey, who will have a job for life any more ) and we hold “portfolio careers”.

On top of this concept that we will be flexible in our work space and the work we do over a lifetime of work, is the idea that we need to be creative and flexible in the mentors we seek too.

Yes, mentors with an “s”. You need multiple, and in fact when I’ve supported peers to really sit down and think about it, we all have several but it’s not a thought out process. And there’s nothing more dangerous than a mentor you didn’t choose. [Read more…]

Collecting Courage: Traversing the whiteness of the philanthropic sector as Black fundraisers

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“Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love.”  ~ Martin Luther King Jr.

Collecting Courage: Joy, Pain, Freedom, Love is a perfect example of what happens when two parallel paths converge to create something special and of significance.

On one pathway was Our Right to Heal, an initiative featuring the voices of ten Black Canadian fundraisers sharing their journey towards healing from painful and traumatic experiences. In May 2020, a few days before George Floyd was killed at the hands of the Minneapolis police on May 25th, the stories were published by the Association of Fundraising Professionals (Global). His death served as a flashpoint triggering worldwide outrage about police brutality against Black people and igniting protests against anti-Black racism.

On a related and separate path, our group of Black Canadian fundraisers selected Cap in Hand: How Charities are Failing the People of Canada and the World by Gail Picco as our book club selection for December 2019. When Gail joined us for the discussion, she shared her idea about a compilation of writings featuring the voices of Black fundraisers. In March 2020, Gail became the Editor-in-Chief of The Charity Report, a new digital magazine, and at the same time launched Gail K. Picco Books, an imprint under Civil Sector Press.

These two convergent paths intersected, creating a perfect storm and genesis for the book. Conditions and timing were right to address historic exclusion and oppression in the charity sector. In June, discussions got underway and Collecting Courage: Joy, Pain, Freedom, Love was born. [Read more…]

4 Common Fundraising Challenges – And How To Overcome Them

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A plant growing out of a vase filled with coins.

Raising enough money to support programs and services can be challenging, especially for small and medium sized organizations.

This year, Covid and the resulting inability to have fundraising “as usual” has brought even greater obstacles and anxieties to many organizations.

Are any of these four common fundraising challenges tripping up your organization?

[Read more…]

Building a Thoughtful Fundraising Career

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Laptop with a You've Got This Sign beside it.The year was 2009. I had just graduated from university and knew I wanted to work in the non-profit sector but, like so many others, I had no clue how to go about building my career. None of my relatives were fundraisers or non-profit executives. No one I knew even worked for a charity. Without special connections or outside assistance, I had to learn how the non-profit sector operates the hard way. Despite this initial setback, I achieved several career milestones at a relatively early age and these accomplishments did not go unnoticed. As a result, aspiring and mid-career fundraisers often reach out to me to ask for career advice; to help them weigh the benefits of taking a specific course, program or designation; or to understand how they can emulate my success.

I think many are disappointed to hear me say that there is no silver bullet. I attribute my success as a fundraiser to being very thoughtful about my career development rather than to any one specific thing I’ve done. In order to be successful, you have to know where you want to go, develop a plan to get there, and then actually follow your plan. Of course, you will have to put in a lot of hard work along the way too. Success doesn’t happen overnight, and you will have to adjust course as challenges present themselves and new opportunities become available to you. Creating a plan doesn’t mean that your plan can’t change. But, if you don’t create a plan for your career, your career will happen to you instead of you taking charge and making it happen the way you want it to. [Read more…]

It’s All About Impact

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lightning strikeI’ll never forget the day, my staff member, whose role is Latino Outreach, came into my office to let me know that a family who had lost everything in a fire had called our center in order to ask if we could provide them with a house full of furniture. They had lost everything in the fire, had no insurance and little means to replace their furniture. This is not an unusual request, in that our humanitarian center regularly helps people with all kinds of needs, whether that be food, clothes, furniture or mental health counseling.

What was unusual that day, was the fact that on the exact same day, we received a call from one of our regular donors. She wanted to donate a house full of furniture to our center. She knew that by giving us this furniture, we would normally turn around and sell these items through our thrift stores, which in turn directly supported our many outreach programs like our food pantry. Her furniture was very nice and would sell for a good price at our stores.

Before hanging up the phone, she asked if by chance we had a family who was in need of furniture. While she was fine giving it to us to sell through our stores, she would prefer it be given to a family who really needed it if there was someone who presented a need for it. [Read more…]

Stay Curious, Play the Infinite Game

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In 1986, American philosopher James Carse introduced the concept of two types of games – finite games and infinite games. Finite games have a winner and loser. Infinite games have no finish line and the goal is to keep the game going as long as possible. More than 33 years later, Simon Sinek gave voice to this philosophy in his leadership touchstone, The Infinite Game.

Even if you haven’t read the book (though I highly recommend that you do), the tenets of it will likely feel like second nature to those of us in fundraising: we over me, progress over perfection and the importance of always keeping an eye on the big picture. To break it down in our industry’s nomenclature, meeting a fundraising goal is a finite thing; building a movement is infinite. [Read more…]

Creating an Environment for Fundraising to Thrive

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Too often in charitable organizations, fundraising is seen as distinct from delivering on mission.

Yet fundraising cuts horizontally across an organization, touching virtually every aspect of its work. And, in order to raise money effectively, you can’t simply work hard at fundraising, you must also work hard at creating the right environment – the enabling ecology – for fundraising to thrive.

Fundraising’s enabling ecology approach suggests that the sustainability of your fundraising program depends on the strength, interconnectedness and balance of each of the approach’s four elements: strategies, infrastructure, culture and principles. And you must purposefully plan for each if you want to have the full involvement of your organization and ultimately raise more money. [Read more…]