I’m thrilled to announce that registration is formally open for the 2012 Course in Exponential Fundraising at Harvard. Please go to http://www.hks.harvard.edu/hauser/cef/  for a more detailed description of the program. A Course in Exponential Fundraising is a year-long engagement during which I work with 20 visionary leaders from the nonprofit sector who want to both dramatically improve [...]

I have had two surgeries in the last six weeks. Yesterday, I spent a joyful hour making a list of the many ways people have been there for me during this challenging time: phone calls, flowers, books, poems, letters, food and visits. In an act of utter masochism, one of my friends even insisted on [...]

Exponential Fundraising founder and 24-year fundraising veteran Jennifer McCrea has worked with CEOs, fundraisers and board members from a wide variety of nonprofits, including Millennium Promise, Acumen Fund, Donorschoose.org, Grameen America, Teach for America, Witness, Columbia University, Quincy Jones Foundation, Comic Relief, X Prize Foundation, VH1 Save the Music Foundation, Creative Commons, MIT Media Lab and many others. [...]

Celebration builds community. I don’t mean just celebrating the end of a campaign or a transformational gift.  I’m talking about frequent celebrations with your whole team – your board, your philanthropic partners, your colleagues. Celebrations are a way for members of your community to come together to honor what you’ve done and where you are [...]

Meet lonely George. George is a seasoned philanthropist.  Someone I’ve known for years. George leads a full, meaningful life that includes giving to a number of global organizations. But he revealed something to me recently that caught me by surprise: that his experience of giving is often profoundly isolating. Wait a minute. Isn’t giving a [...]

In a recent blog post Sasha Dichter quotes my friend Katya Andresen with something that really resonated:  “It’s impossible to talk about generosity without being vulnerable, impossible to be truly generous without opening yourself up.” So what does “opening yourself up” really mean and how does this add to the generosity equation? What does “being [...]

Failure to close your first gift, regardless of its size, is one of the biggest obstacles to your success in creating partnerships.  Of course, at first we need time and spaciousness with people to explore our respective interests and where they may meet. But we generally wait too long to invite people to join with [...]

“Extremely difficult and demanding.” That’s how a friend describes her relationship with one of her top donors. She says she’s in a “can’t-live-with-him, can’t-live-without-him” bind. She worries that if she tells him what’s really on her mind, he’ll get angry and possibly withdraw his critical support (and very visible name in the community) from her organization. [...]

I started my Course in Exponential Fundraising at Harvard last week standing at a big white board, marker at the ready, and asked the class this simple question:  “What is fundraising?” The group shouted out answers like: directing resources to things that urgently need to be done on the planet; listening to people’s passions and [...]