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 For years, nonprofit leaders became entrenched in outdated practices that have left organizations of all sizes scrambling for competitive grant funding and losing money...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 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 empowering you to raise big money while still having a life outside work. Imagine having enough money to not only meet expenses and get past the status quo but grow. Imagine on-the-job stress and exhaustion are gone. Imagine time for friends, family, and...

This article tells you how to get a second gift. According to data compiled by Giving USA, the first-time donor retention rate has hovered right around 24 percent for years. That means that of every 100 new donors you recruit this year, only twenty-four will give again. That’s abysmal.

You...