As you know, the heart of any effective training is experiential education – exercises, activities, role plays, small group projects, and so forth. Every successful activity begins with a set of instructions – what you want people to do – and the context for why you want them to do it. You can design a terrific workshop, but unless … [Read more...]
When Bad is Good: How to Facilitate a Great Exercise Based on Bad Behavior
How many times have you heard somebody (probably your mother) say to you, “Learn from your mistakes!” It turns out that your mother was on to something. We can, in fact, learn a lot from our failures, missteps, and missed opportunities. When it comes to training fundraisers to make the all-important face-to-face ask, encouraging … [Read more...]
Finish Strong: Three Options for Ending an Effective Workshop
You designed a solid agenda. You delivered a terrific training, with lots of engaging exercises and activities. Everybody learned a lot, laughed a lot, and is anxious to try out their new skills. Now what? Before they return to their busy lives, everyone needs to take a breath, prioritize what they’ve learned, and make a plan. As a … [Read more...]
An exercise that raises money while you do it
Is your board afraid of fundraising? You’re not alone. Most boards find the whole subject taboo. Here’s a real-world example. Imagine that your nonprofit faced the following challenges: Most of your board members are both unskilled at fundraising and anxious about doing it. (Sounds familiar, right?) You board gathers only twice … [Read more...]
Challenge Your Board, Raise More Money
You’re probably familiar with the challenge or matching gift. A generous donor provides a gift or grant on the condition that you raise an equal amount from other sources. These gifts typically require a 1-to-1 match. Each donation you receive is matched dollar for dollar, though other ratios are possible. Challenge gifts are … [Read more...]
Share the Power: Train Everyone to Raise Money
"Who should we invite to our board fundraising training?" asks the curious client. This is often followed by a string of specific questions: “What about the staff? How about our volunteers? The development committee? Should we invite potential board members we are recruiting? How about program staff?” I have a very simple answer: … [Read more...]
Yes We Can: Two Exercises to Inspire Your Board
When I worked as a development director, I gathered our program staff once a year to brainstorm “what if” questions: What if we had all the money we needed? What if we could focus on the work we wanted to do without worrying about the budget – what would we do? What if we had the capacity to try new things and do our work … [Read more...]
Boards and Fundraising: Three Tasks Everyone Can Do
If you ask fundraising professionals to describe their deepest and most enduring fantasy, the answer would sound something like this: “Give me a wealthy board filled with wealthy people who will ask their wealthy friends for money.” Sure, those boards exist, but they are very, very rare. Unless you work with a legacy institution – a … [Read more...]
Turn Your Board into a “Place of We”
Is it hard to get your board members excited about raising money? Our friend Judy Levine of Cause Effective just wrote a terrific piece about the possibility of board members training board members. She delights in the idea that boards can use our new Train Your Board book to train themselves – without a consultant, professional … [Read more...]
Help Your Board Members Become Comfortable Raising Money: A 3-Part Plan
Does the idea of looking like a fool make you happy? Do you enjoy trying out new skills for the first time in front of people you want to impress? I bet you answered these questions with a resounding “NO!” Your Board Members Want to Be Successful Most people want to be successful! They want to be competent and effective. … [Read more...]