How big is your marketing budget? Let me guess: Not big enough. Many grassroots nonprofits struggle with marketing. They want a big brand, but have little time or money to invest. Sadly, many of these groups ignore the best tool in the marketing toolbox – and it’s free. Word of mouth! While your marketing options have expanded … [Read more...]
Fundraising Training, Step by Step
Name one important skill you mastered the first time you tried it. Perhaps you can find an example or two, but let’s face it – we become good at things by learning basic principles, followed by lots of practice. Fundraising is no different. It’s a skill to be mastered. If you want your board, staff, or any group to master … [Read more...]
Ask Your Board: How High Will You Go?
Note: This guest post is from our colleague Amy Eisenstein, one of the country’s leading fundraising consultants and trainers. Thanks Amy! Your board members are essential for successful fundraising, especially when it comes to major gift fundraising. Unfortunately, fundraising doesn’t come naturally to most board members, which means … [Read more...]
Talkers, non-talkers, and disrupters: How to effectively engage your group
If you’ve ever chaired a meeting, taught a class, organized people to accomplish a specific task, or facilitated anything, you’ve undoubtedly encountered these challenges. People who talk too much People who are uncomfortable talking in groups or simply choose not to speak People who disrupt the process and require a lot of … [Read more...]
Want a productive meeting? Create a great agenda
Many board members confuse going to meetings with fulfilling their duties. Alas, attending meetings barely qualifies as work – especially when you consider the typical agenda. A report, a few questions, another report, another question or two, a digression, a discussion about which color to paint the office, and an argument about the … [Read more...]
Gnarly Questions (and Answers) About Board Training – Part 2
Last week we ran the first part of Andy’s Q&A with consultant Mazarine Treyz, who posed several challenging questions about building and training effective boards. This week, we’re sharing the rest of their conversation. Enjoy! Finding great board members Mazarine: How can you find good board members? What’s a way to get the BEST … [Read more...]
Gnarly Questions (and Answers) About Board Training – Part 1
Andy recently sat down with Mazarine Treyz, a terrific colleague based in Portland, Oregon. Mazarine asked tough questions about training boards. Andy did his best to answer them. Thanks to Mazarine for sharing this Q&A on her blog. Here’s your chance to eavesdrop on their conversation. The biggest mistake – and how to avoid it … [Read more...]
Using Fundraising Parties to Engage Reluctant Board Members
As we roll into spring – and party season! – we’re offering two exercises to help you create and host profitable house parties. Last month, we shared a simple activity, Planning a Fundraising House Party, that you can use to create a party plan calendar. Do this exercise first. Today’s post features a follow-up exercise, Fundraising … [Read more...]
10 Tips to Help You Train Like a Pro
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...]
In Praise of Role Plays – Because Sometimes You Need to Make People Uncomfortable
After leading a recent fundraising training, I read the following comment on one of the evaluation forms: What was your favorite part of the workshop? The role play. What was your least favorite part of the workshop? The role play. Clearly, this person had participated in something uncomfortable, learned a lot from the experience, … [Read more...]