donor – Page 6 – The Healthy Non-Profit

Charitable giving was anemic in 2011

July 3, 2012 DonorDreams Fundraising, resource development

It is that time of the year when Giving USA releases its findings on how well (or not so well) the charitable giving sector did in the previous year. After adjusting for inflation, the experts tell us that charitable giving rose less than one percent in 2011, and individual giving did about the same.

You can secure a free copy of executive summary of Giving USA’s report from their online store or by clicking here.

A few observations

Nothing has changed. The charitable giving sector has been in a holding pattern for a number of years since the economic crash of 2008. It mirrors the slow sluggish economic recovery numbers. Is anyone surprised? I know that I am not.
It could be worse. Charitable giving dropped by dropped by double digits in 2008 and 2009. Complaining about a one percent increase feels wrong when juxtaposed against those historic numbers.
Good is still good. Look around your community and you will see three different kinds of non-profit agencies . . . ones that are struggling, ones that are holding their own, and ones that are have found a way to do well.

The bottom line is very simple for me. Donors have less money (or feel like they have less money) and started prioritizing their charitable giving. Figuring out their priorities and how to remain a priority is as simple as asking them.

Are you a non-profit organization that has either weathered the storm or done fairly well since the 2008-09 economic crash? If so, please scroll down and share why you think that is in the comment section.

Here’s to your health!

Erik Anderson
Founder & President, The Healthy Non-Profit LLC
www.thehealthynonprofit.com
erik@thehealthynonprofit.com
http://twitter.com/#!/eanderson847
http://www.facebook.com/eanderson847
http://www.linkedin.com/in/erikanderson847

Fundraising questions to ask donors and anticipate from them

June 21, 2012 DonorDreams Fundraising, volunteers

Last week we started a series of blog posts focused on the art of asking questions, and this theme has carried over into this week. So far, we’ve looked at questions that executive directors should be asking themselves and their boards. We’ve also looked at questions board members should be ask of themselves and their fellow board volunteers. Yesterday, we looked at various questions you need to ask prospective board members before asking them to join your board. Today, we’re ending this series of posts by looking at 1) powerful questions that donors should be asking the non-profit agencies they support and 2) questions non-profits should be asking their supporters.

Questions that donors have of you

Over the last 15 years, I have been part of countless solicitation teams and answered more questions than I care to recall at this time of the morning. While those questions tend to be all over the place thanks in part to “unique circumstances,” there are commonly asked questions that many donors seem to ask after they’ve been asked to consider making a charitable contribution.

What will my contribution help accomplish?
Specifically, how will my contribution make a difference in your clients’ lives?
How financial stable is your organization?
There are so many worthy causes that keep asking for support. Why should I support you?
How much of my contribution directly supports programming and how much will underwrite administrative and fundraising expenses?
Tell me more about your fee structure and why are you charging your clients what you’re charging them? How do you know that is the right amount? Why not more?

The list of FAQs is much larger, but these are just questions that I recall answering over and over again. If you want a more comprehensive list of questions, you may want to read Harvey McKinnon’s book “The 11 Questions Every Donor Asks: And the Answers All Donors Crave“.

Why is it important to know what burning questions to expect? I think there are two HUGE reasons:

If you do a better job “anticipating” these questions and build those answers into your case for support and solicitation presentation, I predict that your annual campaign numbers will start climbing.
There is a long list of fears that get in the way of people volunteering to help your agency with fundraising. One of the top reasons is their fear of not being able to answer questions. Addressing FAQs as part of your annual campaign training program will improve volunteer confidence, reduce the amount of avoidance behavior during the campaign, and result in better solicitations (and hopeful result in better fundraising numbers).

Questions that you should have of donors

As I said earlier, I’ve been on many fundraising solicitation teams, and I’ve seen many things throughout the years. Too often, I’ve seen volunteers rush through the solicitation, get a commitment, and quickly downshift into chit-chat of a personal nature. It is almost as if the volunteer solicitor is non-verbally saying “Phew! Thank goodness that is over.”

I don’t believe there is anything wrong with chit-chat after the solicitation is completed. In fact, there is all sorts of important personal information that could and should be harvested from that conversation, captured on a contact report form, and entered into the donor database. However, most volunteer solicitors don’t receive training on what those conversations should look like.

While it would be easy to use that post-solicitation time to talk about family and personal things, it think the following questions might be more useful in developing a deeper philanthropic relationship with your donors:

If you only had one year to live, what would be most important to you to accomplish?
What are the issues, injustices, principles or causes in this world that get you riled up?
If you could change one thing in the world, what would it be?
What accomplishment or legacy would have ultimate significance to you?
In philanthropic terms, if you had unlimited resources, what would you set out to do?

While it is important to know the names of a donor’s spouse and children as well as where they went to school or go to church, I think it is far more important to understand a donor’s passions, dreams, and desires. Knowing and understanding these things puts you in a position of helping them achieve big things. I believe this is one of the biggest differences between transactional fundraising and donor-centered fundraising™.

I believe these types of questions can transform how a donor views you and your organization . . . FROM fundraising vulture TO philanthropic dream-maker.

Please take a minute this morning to share a commonly asked question that you hear donors asking your volunteer solicitors in the comment box below. Or share with this online community one or two questions that you like to ask donors that helps you better understand their philanthropic hopes and dreams. We can all learn from each other and it is just 60 seconds out of your day. Please?

Here’s to your health!

Non-Profit Time Management: Letting Go of It All

June 6, 2012 DonorDreams Fundraising, leadership, Planning

This week’s “Mondays with Marissa” post was titled “Non-Profit Time Management: Scheduling Social Media Updates“. After reading Marissa’s weekly pearl of wisdom, it got me thinking. During tough economic times, donors are asking non-profits to do more with less, which is leading to longer task lists for both executive directors and fundraising professionals. All of this contributes to a lot of stress in the workplace. In honor of Marissa’s awesome blog post, I am dedicating this week’s posts to the idea of looking more carefully at time-saving tips with regards to managing your agency and implementing your resource development program.

Let’s continue this conversation by looking at David Allen’s Mind-Sweep concept.

I don’t know about you, but when I’ve found myself “under the gun” to produce, I feel like something has a hold over me. I can best describe it as a “gripping feeling” or a “paralysis”. When I feel this way, my productivity falls dramatically. I think this happens because I am concerned about all of the plates that I have spinning. I get too focused on all of the things I need to do and not focused enough on actually doing them.

A few years ago, when things were especially bad, I asked my employer to send me to a time management training that was based on David Allen’s national best-selling book “Getting Things Done” (GTD).

While I still fundamentally consider myself more of a Frankin-Covey guy, there were a number of interesting and effective tactics that I took away from the GTD training. One of those tactics was called the “Mind-Sweep” and here is how it works:

Secure a pen and stack of loose leaf note cards or a small pad of paper.
Search your mind for things that you need to do — both big and small.
Write down one task per note card and put it in your inbox.
Once you’ve cleared everything out of your head — everything from buying a gallon of milk to calling a specific donor — go back through your inbox and prioritize the tasks in their order of importance.

If you think this exercise seems elementary, I wouldn’t argue with you. However, there is something “freeing” about dumping all of the contents of your brain out onto small pieces of paper. Whenever I have done this, my mind seems to focus and that gripping feeling seems to melt away. Essentially, I am no longer consumed with the thought that I may forget to do something, and I am able to spend time “doing” stuff.

While I’ve done this during extremely busy and chaotic times, I’ve also modified this approach and used it to help me in a Moves Management type of way. Simply focus your mind on an individual donor and everything that you think needs to happen to move them from one gift level to another, and dump it all out on one sheet of paper. The contents of that exercise become all of the “moves” (e.g. cultivation activities) that need to occur to position a donor to the next solicitation. Add dates to that list and put it in a spreadsheet (or your donor database Moves Management relationship tab), and TA-DA you have an individual donor plan.

The same approach can be applied to building a project management plan for a special event fundraiser.

The “mind-sweep” is more than just an organizing tactic, it is a time-savings strategy that can help you stop dithering and start doing. “Getting out of neutral” can be one of the best feelings in the world and can make all the difference when it comes to time management.

Have you ever felt gripped by a similar feeling that I described earlier in this blog post? If so, how did you get “unstuck” and moving forward again? Please scroll down and share a quick thought in the comment section. We can all learn from each other.

Here’s to your health!

Donor Loyalty: Inspect what you expect

May 31, 2012 DonorDreams Donor-centered fundraising, Fundraising

Tuesday’s post titled “Time in the office versus time with donors” begged more questions than it answered. Today, we’re going to zoom in on one of those questions and examine it more closely.

How do you measure relationship building
and the success of such activities?

It was suggested in earlier posts that a weekly contact report is one tool that can be used to track relationship building activities; however, there are other tools that you should consider using in conjunction with a contact report.

Dashboard
Scorecard
Annual performance plan
Weekly or monthly reports
Donor database reports
Moves Management reports

If you want to learn more about organizational dashboards, click here to check out a BoardSource book titled “The Nonprofit Dashboard: A Tool for Tracking Progress“. If a dashboard isn’t appealing to you, then you might want to look into a balanced scorecard approach. Click here to see what Bernard Marr at the Advanced Performance Institute has to say about this tool.

Of course, choosing the tool is probably the easiest part of this decision. The more difficult thing is determining which relationship building metrics to track. Here are a few suggestions:

Number of cultivation meetings with prospects
Increased contribution size – maintained – decreased
Number of face-to-face stewardship meetings
Number of prospects converted into donors
Donor loyalty rate
Donor satisfaction survey score
Renewal rates for year two, year three, year four, and year five donors
LYBUNT and SYBUNT renewals

There are no right or wrong answers to the question of what you should track. I believe that it really boils down to the title of this post: “Inspect what you expect”.

I suppose the best advice I can give to you is “don’t try to make decision by yourself”. I encourage you to engage fundraising staff, resource development committee volunteers, board members, fundraising volunteers, and even donors. There is nothing wrong with pulling together a small focus group, ordering a few pizzas, and engaging them with a few thoughtful questions.

If you are looking for a few good samples, the following are a few links that I think are worth looking at:

DZO Strategists: “The Beyond ‘Cash Fundraising’ Management Dashboard“
Candler County Schools: “District Balanced Scorecard“
Blackbaud: “Embracing Technology for Moves Management® Success“

Using tools and metrics like these should help you answer the difficult question posed in Tuesday’s blog post: “How much time needs to be spent outside of the office compared to behind your desk?”

What tools does your non-profit organization use to track relationship building and resource development activities? What metrics do you hold your fundraising professionals and executive director to? Please use the comment box below to share your thoughts.

Here’s to your health!

Stewarding donors this Memorial Day

May 28, 2012 DonorDreams Donor-centered fundraising, Fundraising

Happy Memorial Day everyone!

I always feel funny saying that because this holiday doesn’t feel very happy. After all, it was created to honor Americans who died during war. For many Americans including me, this holiday has taken on additional meaning in that it provides an opportunity to say THANK YOU to all military service men and women for their service.

What can your non-profit organization do to turn Memorial Day into another donor stewardship opportunity? Here are a few ideas:

Send a card to those donors who are veterans and thank them for their service. Not only did they service their country, but they invest in their community by supporting your organization as well as many other agencies.
Write a letter to the newspaper editor about what Memorial Day means to you and your agency. Remind people that sacrifice is sometime essential to preserve values such as freedom and equality. While honoring the sacrifices made by soldiers for your agency and your community, you can also honor sacrifices of time and money given by volunteers and donors to your organization.
Host a patriotic themed stewardship event for your donors.

Non-profit professionals are typically stretched in too many directions because our agencies are under-resourced. It is for this reason that stewardship often becomes a “back burner issue” and low priority. So, why not use big holidays like Memorial Day as anchors in your organizational calendar to remind us to steward our donors?

Does your agency do anything special for Memorial Day? Please scroll down and share your ideas and thoughts.

Here’s to your health!

Should social service non-profit organizations ever own property?

May 16, 2012 DonorDreams Fundraising, organizational development

For the last few weeks, I’ve been working pledge cards for one of my favorite charities. I must admit that I’m having a blast. The conversations with local philanthropists and donors are so engaging and thought-provoking. Frankly, I’ve been surprised by what some donors believe and in some instances those encounters have turned into interesting blog posts. Today’s post was inspired by one donor’s passionate belief that social service non-profit organizations shouldn’t ever own property.

Oh sure . . . hospitals and colleges are non-profit corporations, and there is little question that those organizations need to own the property and buildings in which they operate. However, some donors in my hometown of Elgin, Illinois don’t believe that the same is true for social service agencies.

Why? Well, this is an interesting question that comes with a long answer.

Let’s just say that more than 10 years ago one of Elgin’s more stable non-profit agencies ran a capital campaign, expanded their building (dramatically), and couldn’t afford to operate within such a dramatically expanded building footprint. Long story short . . . the new building was “sold” within a few years of opening, and the agency had to merge with another organization from outside the community to ensure services continued.

So, what is this really all about? I think it is about donors having LONG MEMORIES. Additionally, the following old expression keeps echoing through my head:

“Fool me once shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me!”

As you can imagine, I did my best to engage this donor in a conversation. Here were some of the highlights of what I said:

Not all non-profit organizations go out-of-business.
Not all non-profits conduct business that can be accommodated by existing rental opportunities.
Not all non-profits have an unstable revenue model or operate under a cloud of financial uncertainty.

In the end, there was no changing this donor’s mind, and it is easy to understand why. He invested and now feels burned. He passionately argued the following powerful points:

Too many social service agencies lack organizational capacity and are stretched too thin. Funding expansion of an agency that has a culture of operating on a shoe string can be like stretching a rubber band too far.
Too many social service agencies don’t operate within a culture of transparency. They sell donors on a capital campaign contribution. Their operations expand, and the agency is back in no time asking for more operating cash to fund their larger footprint. If this was all explained at the same time as the capital campaign solicitation, then that would be one thing, but when that doesn’t happen it leaves a bad taste in the donor’s mouth.
What is the real estate market suppose to do with buildings that are built specifically around specialty functions of a social service non-profit agency? These buildings aren’t just office spaces with cubicles that can be re-sold to any number of potential buyers. Oftentimes, social service organizations are building spaces unique to their services.

I get it . . . I get it . . . Fool me once; shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me! I may not agree with this donor, but I definitely get it and respect his feelings.

So, what are your thoughts? Do you think social service non-profits should place a premium on renting rather than owning their home? What would you have said to this donor that I might not have? Is there a more donor-centered fundraising approach that should be used when soliciting for a capital campaign so that future annual support won’t be jeopardized? Any suggestions on how a donor like this one can be re-engaged? Please use the comment box below and share your thoughts. We can all learn from each other.

Here’s to your health!

Work-Life Balance for non-profit professionals? Ask a donor for help.

May 11, 2012 DonorDreams Donor-centered fundraising, leadership, organizational development

Welcome to O.D. Fridays at DonorDreams blog. Every Friday for the foreseeable future we will be looking more closely at a recent post from John Greco’s blog called “johnponders ~ about life at work, mostly” and applying his organizational development messages to the non-profit community.

Today, we’re focusing on a post that John titled “At Peace“. In that post, he talks about two different pictures and uses those images to illustrate the point that there is a difference between “at peace” and “getting some peace”.

After reading this post, I couldn’t get my mind off of the idea of work-life balance. This topic of conversation comes up all the time when I’m talking to non-profit professionals. As I previously blogged about in a post titled “Kissing While Driving for Non-Profit Agencies,” non-profit organizations are typically under-resourced. As a result, almost all nof the on-profit professional who I know wear multiple hats, lack balance in their life, and appear to be on the brink of “going postal”.

At Peace? Definitely NOT!

Over the last 15 years, I’ve battled with the ideas that John eloquently lays out in his blog post. The following are just a few things that I’ve tried:

Attending time management trainings (e.g. FranklinCovey, David Allen’s Getting Things Done, etc)
Using various time management tools ranging from FranklinCovey to Microsoft Outlook. I’m now a Android smart phone junkie, who is utterly lost in life when my device isn’t within reach.
Going on vacation
Quiting my job and opening The Healthy Non-Profit LLC

In hindsight, John is so right . . . I was “getting some peace” in most of those instances. So, what can non-profit professionals do to be “At Peace“????

I like John’s suggestion that re-evaluating and adjusting our expectations about what “peace” really means. In his post, he talks about the picture of a violent waterfall, jagged mountains and an angry sky being a picture of “peace”. Maybe accepting this idea rather than fighting against it is more than half the battle.

I also like John’s challenge at the end of his post where he asks the following question:

“Perhaps, when leaders disrupt our peace when making organizational changes, they should orchestrate efforts to enable us to adapt and change?”

As I contemplate this question, I struggle with what those efforts might look like.

So, I have a suggestion for all of you who find yourself struggling with the same question:

Open your donor database.
Run a report showing your agency’s top 50 lifetime donors.
Scan the list in search of a donor who owns their own business, has gone through some change initiatives in the last few years, and appears to be busy and yet peaceful.
Pick-up the phone and call that donor.
Invite them out to share a cup of coffee.
Tell them about John’s blog post topic.
Ask them to share their secrets to success with regards to being “at peace”.
Ask them what efforts they orchestrated at work to help their employees adapt and change and in effect putting their workplace “at peace”.

Not only will you most likely get some great advice, but this conversation will have a “stewardship effect” for that donor. It will deepen a relationship with someone who is already important to your organization.

I like this suggestion mostly because it reminds me of the fact that donors are not just ATMs that produce cash every time we ask for it. Donors are friends and part of our non-profit family. We can put this principle in action by asking them to donate their knowledge and experiences in addition to their financial contributions. In doing so, the relationship gets stronger and grows.

Do you struggle with work-life balance issues at your non-profit organization? What have you personally done to try to achieve balance? What has your agency done to help facilitate this idea of being “at peace”? Have you ever engaged donors in questions like this? How did it work out for you?

Please scroll down and share your thoughts in the comment box. We can all learn from each other.

Here’s to your health!

Where are the philanthropists and non-profit board volunteers of tomorrow?

May 10, 2012 DonorDreams Fundraising, leadership

A few weeks ago I had the honor and privilege of having breakfast with one of my community’s iconic philanthropists. His family name is legendary around here. They have contributed lots of money to a number of different non-profit organizations, and those who don’t receive any support from this family pursue them like a dog looking for a lost bone.

During our breakfast meeting, he shared a concern that I’ve heard many non-profit people express over the last 12 years that I’ve worked and lived in this community:

Where are the philanthropists and non-profit board volunteers of tomorrow?

As has been the case in most communities for as long as anyone can remember, there is a small circle of very influential people who own businesses, employ lots of people, possess a fair amount of wealth, sit on non-profit boards, and influence policymakers and opinion-shapers.

This small group of very influential people is getting older and their numbers are dwindling. While the circle always seemed to replenish itself in the past, there is this feeling that we now live in different times. Many of the non-profit people in my community with whom I speak are concerned that the next generation isn’t apparent or obvious. I even see some agencies starting to recruit the next generation from the current of circle of philanthropists because they’re not sure what the future looks like and this is as good of a strategy as anyone can think of.

My breakfast partner weighed in with his opinion, and I found myself enlightened and frightened all at the same time.

He believes that globalization of our economy is at the root of this trend.

The old economic paradigm produced locally owned business people who amassed wealth and influence. They lived locally. They employed their neighbors and friends. They were able to see firsthand and comprehend the idea of “community need,” and it was in their personal and business interests to invest back into the community.

The new economic paradigm aggregates business in the hands of large multinational corporations that play on a global stage. As a result, our community gets “big box stores” rather than locally owned and controlled businesses. The decision-makers for these very large companies don’t live here. In fact, many of these corporations are located in large markets like Chicago, New York and Los Angeles. Or even more challenging, they are located overseas and their idea of “philanthropy” can be a little different from ours for cultural reasons.

In the opinion of my breakfast partner, the effect of globalization on the non-profit sector is and will be devastating!

He believes that for communities that are not major cities, the days of a small inner circle of influential philanthropists may be over.

When there isn’t a small group of wealthy business owners who live locally and are motivated by personal and business interests to participate in philanthropic activities, then he hypothesized that charitable giving will get tighter and non-profit mergers aren’t far down the road.

Finally, he believes this trend is most devastating inside of the non-profit board room. He sees many well-intentioned volunteers agreeing to do their part and serve on non-profit boards, but he sees these individuals lacking the financial resources, social networks and business acumen necessary to fuel an effective non-profit sector.

In the final analysis, he thinks the non-profit sector in smaller communities will be radically restructured in the next decade as a result of economic globalization trends.

I think that I agree. It is very possible that this economic trend will be what fuels non-profit mergers and acquisitions. It will also likely re-shape board development and resource development best practices.

As breakfast came to an end and we said our goodbyes, I was left with one thought that is more than two millennia ago by the Greek philosopher Heraclitus of Ephesus:

“The only constant is change.”

My conclusion? We can sit around our non-profit boardroom tables and lament change. Or we can recognize the challenges and adjust to the headwinds.

I say . . . Upward and onward! I have faith that the non-profit sector can and will adapt and evolve. We always have and I suspect we always will; however, let’s not drag our feet and let’s a move on it because “change” is coming fast.

So, I’m curious about what you think about this one philanthropist’s opinion about the effects of globalization? Are you having the same conversations in your community? What do you see other non-profits doing to adjust to what they perceive as winds of change? What are you doing? Please scroll down and share your thoughts in the comment box. We can all learn from each other.

Here’s to your health!

Happy Birthday to ME! And what can non-profits do with THAT?

May 8, 2012 DonorDreams Donor-centered fundraising, Fundraising

Yesterday, one of my favorite non-profit executive directors took the time to wish me an early happy birthday and surprised me with a bottle of wine — La Crema Pinot Noir. It was a thoughtful gesture because my partner and I are big “winos”.

The reason I bring it up today can be summarized in one simple word:

STEWARDSHIP

Over the last decade, my partner and I have personally contributed $40,000 to this non-profit organization. In addition to our money, we’ve both contributed our time by helping with special events and working pledge cards for their annual campaign. To say “we’ve drank the Kool-Aid” is probably an understatement.

While we both like to hear about this organization’s program outcomes and community impact, we really get more excited when we hear testimonials or success stories. In other words, numbers and stats are nice, but stories are the payday we crave more than anything.

While the bottle of wine was very thoughtful and much appreciated, a simple birthday card probably would’ve sufficed. A phone call would’ve been really nice, especially if the conversation would’ve included a recent fun success story. The bottom line is that the birthday wishes from this non-profit organization sends a clear message that I’m a valued part of their family. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t like being thought of that way.

As I bask in the after-glow of this stewardship touch, I find myself wondering what else could non-profit organizations do around a donor’s birthday? The following is a short, incomplete list representing just a few thoughts:

Send them a birthday card or call them . . . make sure to weave in a story about how their support makes a difference for your clients
If the donor doesn’t like “gift giving and receiving,” then this could be a tribute gift opportunity for your agency. This is, of course, where the donor tells their friends that in lieu of a birthday gift they’d appreciate contributions be made to your non-profit organization instead.
If your agency runs a “birthday club” for clients, then there might be an opportunity to fold donors into the same program using birthday recognition walls or inviting them to attend an organization-wide birthday party where they can interact with clients.
It could be an opportunity to turn a major donor’s birthday into a special event tribute party. The Elgin Symphony Orchestra is doing exactly this in a few weeks by inviting supporters to purchase tickets and attend a birthday bash for Harry Blizzard who is one of their biggest donors and supporters.

What does your non-profit organization do for donors around their birthdays? How do you go about capturing birth dates from donors? What systems do you use to remind yourself of this information? Please scroll down and use the comment box to answer a few of these questions.

Here’s to your health! (Oh, and thanks for the wine, Rose!)

Know when to stop chasing the great white whale

May 3, 2012 DonorDreams Fundraising

I’ve done it. We’ve all done it. I’m, of course, referring to the act of chasing that big philanthropist in your community.

Every community has a small circle of very generous philanthropists. They have the financial capacity to give, and they support their favorite charities in ways that the average donor (like you and me) can only dream of doing some day.

From the outside looking in, fundraising and non-profit professionals start fixating on strategies to engage those individuals in our mission and our organization. It looks something like this:

looking at who (if anyone) in our agency’s circle of friends has access to that donor’s network;
engaging other people from that philanthropist’s social network in activities associated with our non-profit organization; and
inviting that philanthropist to get involved (e.g. attend an event, take a survey, participate in a focus group, or even volunteer some time).

All of this is called “CULTIVATION” and it is indeed a fundraising best practice; however, sometimes after all of this work the prospect doesn’t turn into a donor. There is no “magic moment”. There is no pledge card or check.

One of the most important skills for fundraising professionals to possess is to know when to stop cultivating and move onto greener, more promising pastures. If you’re unable to do this, then you end up spending lots of time (which is a limited resource) on something that will have no return on investment for your organization.

So, how do you know when to stop? Well, I think we can learn a lot about this by looking at it through a “relationship” lens.

View a Vlog post titled “They’re Just Not That Into You” by someone using the handle “DeniseActutallyVlogs” on YouTube. Sure, she is talking about dating rituals, but how different is that really from fundraising and resource development.

Caution: Denise is a little “salty” at times during her Vlog post, but it is mostly PG-rated stuff. I encourage you to listen to what she has to say and translate it into the language of fundraising. I think there are more than just a few nuggets of wisdom.

How have you guarded against chasing the great white whale? When do you know it is time to stop cultivating an individual and move along? Please scroll down and use the comment box to share a tip or two with your fellow non-profit friends.

Here’s to your health!