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Avoid the trap of “maybe gifts” and mission drift

I heard it again on my last trip out —  a proposal to expand an organization’s mission packaged as a development strategy. “By launching X, we’ll open the organization to a whole new group of donors,” the executive director said with more conviction than evidence.

Never mind that the organization’s strategic plan included nary a hint of the proposed project. The siren song of potential new dollars (hinted at, but not confirmed by the ED) was too much for the cash-anxious board to resist. My bet? A year from now they’ll be singing a sadder (and more realistic) song.Read More »Avoid the trap of “maybe gifts” and mission drift

Move your fundraising beyond the insanity of the same-old, same-old

I gave up CNN or any other of the myriad news channels this past week. Not for Lent, but because the debacle unfolding in Washington, D.C. was simply too painful to watch. I’d like to think that the trauma of the last fiscal cliff experience would have knocked a little compromise (I stopped hoping for sense a long time ago) into our nation’s leaders.

But oh, no. There they went again, this time taking the nation with them over the edge. And here we are, all of us, clinging by our fingernails to the words of pundits who claim the fall won’t be so bad.Read More »Move your fundraising beyond the insanity of the same-old, same-old