I noticed that a consistent leadership annual fund donor had stopped giving through the annual fund and instead had pledged to fund an endowment. He had the financial resources to continue his annual fund support as well, but he hadn’t, and I wondered why. Imagine my...
Talking about the Annual Fund “They don’t like the annual fund.” More than one frontline fundraiser has told me that about a donor. I want to understand what that means, so I ask for more information. What is it that they don’t like? Are they uncomfortable with …...
A friend recently returned from Sweden and shared pictures from her visit to the Vasa Museum in Stockholm. It’s a wonderful museum that features a recovered 17th-century warship, along with collections and insights into life in the 1600s. It made me think back to my...
After a brief stint on the crew team in college, I ended up serving as a rowing coach and coxswain for a local rowing club in my hometown for a little over a decade. Being the little person jammed into the “back” seat is about more than just yelling stuff, which is...
My last trip to see a client onsite was February 28, 2020. After I flew home, a friend who is a virologist gave me some masks, wipes, and advice to buy three weeks of groceries “just in case.” So I did. (If he’d told me to buy toilet paper, I’d have said he was a...
How nice would it be to set a fundraising dollar goal that you had confidence in? Around now, many programs are developing goals for the coming fiscal year. I’ll be the first to say that fundraisers are a fundamentally optimistic community by nature – it’s part of...
