Giving is Good
If your fundraising year runs on the calendar year, yesterday you started over. If you are everyone else, yesterday still offers you the opportunity to start over personally. All around us we are told that a new year brings with it big, new possibilities, fresh growth potential, new learnings, and even, reinvention. We might even…
As an advancement professional, you might have planned a very compelling message to distribute by email and social media today – both to recapture past donors and invite gifts from first-time donors. Perhaps you have in mind a message that includes a student or participant story. Perhaps you have information about impact you want to…
I once worked for a president who was not a fan of the phrase, “stand ready” – as in, “I stand ready to help you in any way I can.” He would say, “I don’t want someone who ‘stands ready.’ There is no motion there. They are waiting for direction or for something else to…
For those who are not scheduled to work, today is a holiday we often overlook. Today’s holiday is different than the tradition of Christmas and gift-giving celebrated by many yesterday. Today represents an opportunity. As we awake this morning, many of our homes are filled with new stuff – toys, clothing, games, items to return,…
Giving benefits the giver far more than the gift benefits the recipient. When we earnestly embrace the implications of this single sentence, the experience of tomorrow’s holiday (for those who celebrate) fundamentally changes for us. As does the purpose of our work. Merry Christmas. Follow and share Jason’s Blog:
Over the last 20 years, our world has seen an incredible transformation in the ways humans interact, including how we make friends. Not only has technology focused us more on screens than faces, we have experienced a global pandemic which distanced us from one another, and we are in the midst of deep crisis of…
It’s easy to think of the people who support our mission as, “our donors.” The reality, though, is that generous people give to many different organizations and causes. And “our donors,” also support other institutions. Therefore, they aren’t so much “our donors,” as we are “an organization they support.” This reframe is important. Instead of…
One of the most helpful ways to become a better baseball player is to practice the simple game of playing catch. You and at least one other player get some distance apart and begin to throw the ball back and forth. This simple, repeatable practice can be a lot of fun. You can practice gripping…
If we believe our job is to delight all donors we will end up frustrated, disappointed, and burned out. Not only is delighting all donors an impossible goal, it’s also the wrong goal. While we know from research and practice that most donors give because of a belief in the goodness of our institutional mission,…
Conventional wisdom is that we must evoke a sense of care, empathy, or concern in order to persuade people to give. So, we spend a lot of time and energy coming up with compelling stories. Clearly, many people will give once their “heart-strings are pulled.” But, the reverse process is also true. When people give…