Is your board making you crazy? Driving you right up the wall? You’re not alone. A committed and inspired board leads to a strong organization. A dysfunctional board or one that’s not inspired makes it almost impossible for the organization to succeed. Development staff often spot any board problems. To succeed in our work, we […]
Are you available to donors?
Are you available to donors? Can they reach you when they want to connect? I’ve written about a few badly done gift acknowledgments, here and here. I didn’t want to shame the organizations, so I omitted their names. But after each post, a colleague urged me to contact the offending organization. These organizations deserve to […]
An endearing appeal from a novice
Sometimes we work so hard at getting it all right. We read everything we can find. We learn all the rules. We labor over each appeal, sure it will be “the one”. And sometimes a complete novice gets an awful lot right. By being sincere. By staying focused on a single message. By working toward […]
Say thank you like you mean it
Don’t settle for a boring, emotion-free thank you. I picked up my mail the other day and opened an envelope from a well-respected advocacy organization. It was an acknowledgment of my recent gift. And it was so disappointing! Mentally, I went through a list of failures in one letter: My husband’s name was spelled incorrectly. […]
The power of one
You’ve probably been hearing the story of young Sarah Murnaghan, the 10-year-old girl with end-stage cystic fibrosis. She’s in desperate need of a lung transplant. Without one, she isn’t likely to survive the next couple of weeks. But transplant rules don’t allow her to move to the front of the line – before adults and […]