The best governing boards have: Foresight – they ensure a cultural and practical framework for longer-term and strategic planning for the institution. Oversight – they embrace the concept of “noses in and fingers out.” They ensure that progress is being made on important outcomes and they ask what is needed to gain additional successes. Insight…
Author: Jason McNeal
I provide leadership, advancement and fundraising consulting services to educational, healthcare, and non-profit organizations.
What Would Your Donors Miss Most About Giving To You?
If a generous, consistent donor stopped giving to you today, what would they miss? The joy? The meaning and impact? The community of being part of a cause with others? The sense of being a good, generous person? The interactions with your institution’s leaders? The interactions with those your institution serves? Something else. . ….
The Accumulated Value of Time
Seventeen years ago when my consulting career began, I also began flying much more – just about every week, in fact. As I got used to the new daily rhythms of airports, rental cars, and hotels, I started experiencing the amount of time spent standing in line from a new perspective. The time it took…
Creatives
We tend to think of those who are artistic or inventive or imaginative as “creative” types. We also tend to box our creative colleagues into the advancement roles of graphic and web design, or marketing, or photography, or communications. But when we deeply think about the important outcomes of advancement work we should consider everyone…
A Healthy Annual Fund
In the rush (or pressure?) to grow our annual fund gift receipts year-over-year, we can lose the broader understanding of context and, in fact, advancement program health. What if, for example, we grew an annual fund from $1,000,000 to $5,000,000 over the course of a 5 year period. And, during that same time period total…
Vagueness and Showing Up
If our goals are vague, we can hide. If our performance metrics are vague, we can hide. If our annual evaluation criteria are vague, we can hide. We may say that we want to show up. We want to make a difference. We want to have an impact. But if we’re not willing to be…
Publicly and Privately
One sign of an unhealthy advancement team culture can be found in the way people talk about themselves. Not the friendly Monday morning sharing of how our weekend was. But, the “peel the onion back,” “let’s hear how you really feel,” observations we all make when times get difficult. For example, when progress is not…
Integrative DX
Most institutions have some form of “stewardship.” The definition and application of this term can vary widely from institution to institution. Generally speaking, though, “stewardship,” typically means, “how we thank our donors,” or “how we report back to donors on the impact of their giving.” Expressing our gratitude when donors give is, of course, important. …
“How Can I Get The Biggest Gift From This Donor?”
This is the wrong question to pose. It’s far more helpful to ask, “how can I help this donor make the biggest difference through our mission?” Gaining agreement on the level of impact is the best precondition to receiving the biggest gift.
Strategic Vulnerability
A current-day, counter-cultural engagement strategy for nonprofit leaders is to share a level of strategic vulnerability with key donors, stakeholders, and institutional influencers. Strategic vulnerability is the purposeful sharing of key problems, concerns, shortcomings, and other issues faced by our institution and, then, inviting others to help. Far too many leaders believe that the most…