Who Owns The Success Of Your Advancement Program?

Advancement leaders are good at setting goals. We have dollar goals, donor number goals, annual giving, major giving, planned giving, and campaign goals.  We have stewardship goals, constituent event goals, and database health and hygiene goals. In fact, because the outputs of our work are so easily quantifiable, there can be a problem at times…

Do This Before You Ask

It’s quite common for advancement professionals and volunteers to want the “silver bullet language” around asking for gifts.  Surely there must be phrases, individual words, and conversation transitions which, when deftly strung together, will unlock the giving motivations in humans. There must be a process, a formula, a blueprint that makes the asking easier and…

The 3 Most Important “Case For Support” Questions

Too many institutions start the draft of their “Case For Support” by focusing on the “support” part of that phrase. These are typical questions asked first: Project:  What do we need money for? Priority:  Is this project/initiative/building our most important priority? Details:  How will we specifically spend the money? And while these are, ultimately important questions…