I’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…]

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…]

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…]

Spoiler alert: I strongly believe that the answer to the question in the title is YES.  And not only that, but there’s a decent chance the impact your money story is having isn’t pretty.

So, what is a money story, exactly?

Most of us learn “stories” about money from the Big Three Influencers: our families, our communities and our churches (and other religions). Sometimes the messages are lovely, about sharing and abundance and villages raising children.  MUCH more often, people are taught that money is scarce, that it must be earned with sweat, that it is infused with power, that it is linked to greed and evil. They learn that money is something others have more of, and that it creates imbalance. They learn that there isn’t enough.  They learn that it comes with strings attached.  They learn that asking for it is bad. [Read more…]