21 Jan Video: why you need to pay attention
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fundraising Tag
Customer Success Manager at Blackbaud Canada08 Jan Finding your hidden statistic
Full disclosure for this blog post: I barely passed statistics in university. I was an Economics minor that took the remedial statistics class. I memorized my formulas and squeaked my way through the course.
Fast forward a few – almost 20 – years, and it turns out that I use statistics quite a bit in my daily life as a fundraiser. Thankfully I am not calculating statistics, but rather I use statistics to emphasize a point, demonstrate a need, or to highlight a social inequality.
Statistics – the big, the bad and the ugly
Not-for-profits spend a lot of time talking about big statistics:10 Dec Top five “aha” phrases from AFP Congress 2013 in Toronto
Here is my list of earth-stopping phrases that I heard at AFP Congress this year. These are the ones that really made me think about what I am doing, and how I am doing it. You can sSend me your "aha" moments in the comments section below.
1) Your donor sees his or her thank you card as the beginning of the relationship, while more often than not, the organization sees the thank you card as the ending of the relationship – Tom Ahern
2) You can’t do it all. You are just going to have to choose what falls off your desk – Karen Osborne, The Osborne Group
3) Millennials (young people between 12 and 31 years of age) see themselves on equal footing, and equal hierarchy with fundraisers and staff who have been in the business for over 15 years. Get over yourselves and accept the fact that good ideas can come from anywhere – Barbara Talisman. Link to PPT slides from “Millennials in the workplace” here.
04 Dec Sharing the space: peer-to-peer coaching
Below is a recent letter that I wrote to Kivi Leroux Miller about my experience in one of her online classes. My biggest take-away from Kivi’s class was that there are people out there that are struggling with the same issues that I am, and that we really should find ways to “share the space.”
Here are three suggestions for including peer-to-peer support in your daily work routine:
- Pick up the phone and talk to a fellow fundraiser about a challenge you are having. Better yet, invite them out for lunch to talk in person;
- Use a conference, or a learning opportunity to connect with a fellow fundraiser – someone with whom you would like to build a relationship. The fact that you like their energy, or their perspective is as good a reason as any to start a conversation;
- Formalize any of the above-mentioned relationships into a bi-weekly or monthly call with your new colleague. Use skype, or google hangout - so that you can actually see each other – and create a peer-to-peer safe environment where you can articulate short-term tasks or professional goals that you want to accomplish before the next peer coaching session.
27 Aug Sponsorship Success from Both Sides of the Table
For all you smaller not-for-profits out there who are thinking about starting a sponsorship program - this one’s for you.
Meet Diane and Jen: local Ottawa real-estate agents interested in making meaningful connections in the communities where they work. Diane and Jen want to do more than just “give money” to these communities - they want to reach out, and touch the pulse of these communities so they can get to the essence of what each neighborhood is about.
Wait a minute! that sounds like a lot of not-for-profits I know. Yes! Read on.
11 Aug Do You Wave?
Do you wave and say thank you to other drivers when you are in your car? Do you communicate and say thank you when they let you into a crowded lane, or when they urge you forward at a shared stop sign?
I do.
It was my 8 year old that noticed it. “Mommy, why are you waving at that guy you don’t know in the other car?” she would say. “Oh, he just let me into his lane, and I wanted to say thanks, honey.” She is a very observant 8 year old. “But you don’t know him, mommy.” I paused to think about her question, and said “I know, but if it were me letting me in, I would want someone to say thank you.”
20 Jun Why I Give
This month I gave my most meaningful gift ever. And because the gift felt special to me, I have been reflecting on why I give. I asked myself:
Why now? Why this amount? Why is it meaningful to me?
Maybe it’s all this talk about vulnerability, but I am ready to share with you my personal thoughts on Why I Give. By listening to my reasons, I hope it will help you understand why your donors give.
It’s very simple:
14 May The Home Turf Advantage
The Dinner Party. It was a social fixture in the ‘60’s, but in the last few decades it has lost some of its allure. If you are a not-for-profit development officer, read on: there are some really good reasons why revitalizing the dinner party can lend meaningful support to your organization.
The best story I have ever heard about hosting “home turf” dinner parties was shared with me by my friend, Kate Jaimet, a writer and journalist here in Ottawa. She was hired by the Chelsea Club - a women’s club for Ottawa’s high society ladies - to compile a mini-history of the organization. The interviews that Kate conducted shed enormous light on how networking happened in Ottawa high society during the past few decades. Here is the story of one of her interviewees.