Thoughts on Nonprofit Leadership

Here’s a familiar scenario. (If you’re an experienced nonprofit executive, I’m almost certain you’ve been here. I know I have.) The rest of your office is dark. The last staff went home hours ago. You’re still handcuffed to your desk, crunching budget numbers. At...

In all this talk about the Major Gifts Fundraising philosophy, I understand the pushback from the nonprofit industry at large. For years, nonprofit leaders became entrenched in outdated practices that have left organizations of all sizes scrambling for competitive grant funding and losing money...

Anything worth doing is worth doing right. Quite clearly, nonprofit fundraising is one of those worth-doing things for millions of charitable missions out there. But in which fundraising activities is your nonprofit investing to actually bring the gratification, freedom, (and tangible results) of...

For years, I’ve been preaching ways for nonprofit leaders to fundraise without breaking their backs. Anyone who’s ever been stuck in an office 70 hours a week – zombified by caffeine, bloodshot eyes reviewing the 15th grant proposal that month, cringing that the annual...

Let’s sit down for a minute and envision nonprofit management and fundraising. Do you see yourself slaving away over mountains of grant proposals or coordinating ornamental butter sculptures at the annual fundraising gala? Do you see disappointment over failures – going the extra...

I remember coming across the Major Gifts Ramp-Up™ Model (and its crazy-like-a-fox architect) several years back. I didn’t know it at the time, but Jimmy LaRose and I had been tackling the same goals for nonprofit fundraising clients for many decades between us. Only the language was...

      This article is about understanding and dealing with people’s reactions to change. People react to change in predictable ways, as do organizations, and they generally don’t like it, even if the change is for the better. Be ready for change. Change will happen if...

     This article outlines six fundraising principles you can learn from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Martin Luther King, Jr. lived a middle-class lifestyle while shaping a movement. He is best known as a prominent civil rights leader of the 1950’s and 60’s. In 1964 he...

     This article is about how to make your vision a reality. Last week in 3 Steps Toward Achieving Your Wildest Dreams we talked about the role visioning plays in achieving nonprofit sustainability. This week we address how to prepare your organization for the changes that will...