My great-great grandmother was a pioneer.  She actually rode in a Conestoga wagon across the great plains to Oklahoma. Like right out of one of those Civil War era Matthew Brady photographs. As kids, my sisters and I were regaled with stories of her bravery and self-determination. She lived to be 113 years old, and family legend has [...]

At your next board meeting, ask each board member to articulate your organization’s “30-second elevator pitch.” In my many experiences of this exercise, most can’t do it. I’ve been to lots of board meetings where we’ve spent hours drafting and redrafting the 30-second elevator pitch. We’ve obeyed, step by step, marketing positioning templates from the [...]

One of my favorite fundraising tips is this: simply spend time with your partners.  Quincy Jones calls it “Hanging 101.”   There is tremendous creativity and trust that builds when you spend time with people with no set expectations and no agenda. It’s a true spontaneous exchange.  Meeting your partners right where they are. Dick Parsons, [...]

I am not a big fan of using galas to raise money.  Never mind the potentially uncomfortable corners organizations paint themselves into (Event Planner: “Should we go with the gold-flecked mousse or the Tuscan Cheescake?” You, Executive Director of “PeopleGottaEat.Org:  ”Seriously?”) Rather, I want to look at this from a pure ROI point of view [...]

Try this:  instead of asking prospective partners “Will you help me?” ask them “How can we work on this together?”  ’Helping,’ even when grounded in clarity and passion on your part, sets up a kind of inequality, not a partnership. This simple shift in language from ‘helping’ to ‘working together’ is a powerful way to set the conditions for [...]

Try this: when meeting someone for the first time, consider clearing the elephant out of the room by saying right up front, “I’m not going to ask you for a gift today.”  I find this to be effective in eliminating one of the main obstacles to building a relationship: not listening. If you know that [...]

My friend Sasha Dichter wrote a thoughtful response http://sashadichter.wordpress.com/2010/03/31/is- fundraising-the-same-thing-as-sales/ to my post “Fundraising isn’t selling.” He writes:  “when you sell something in the right way, you are helping someone get more value from something (a product, an experience, a donation) than what she is paying.  You are solving a problem for her.  You are [...]