Listen, learn, build, engage, thank, listen

The art of fund development is simple: listen, learn, build, engage, thank and listen again. If you can do these things with ernest sincerity and interest, you are well on your way to success in this field. Sounds easy enough. Yet, when you combine these steps with the everyday of returning emails, filing reports, entering contact reports into the database, attending meetings, comparing benchmarks, returning calls and setting appointments, they tend to get lost. Not good people, not good.

So how can we get back to good on this? How can we take the expectations of our Board, supervisors, whomever it may be and get back to relationships, to fund development, to the reason we got into this field in the first place? My response: make it happen. How can you not?

In a time when donors are giving to fewer organizations, becoming more critical of the impact you may or may not be making, more inclined to dig deeper into who you are, what you are doing and their role in making it all happen, we have to be better. Stop blaming the economy for a lack of funding from private sources. Stop the blame game, period. Sure, sit on the floor for a minute and have a tantrum if it makes you feel better, but then get up and realize that we just have to be better. It is no longer acceptable for donors to be an object; they must become people, family, important. Why haven't they always been? I don't know, but in many cases, we do, indeed, need to get it back to good. (I couldn't help it, I had to put this song in... no real relevance other than the fact that I just quite like it.)

So how? If you can, sit down with the CEO of the organization and find out what role philanthropy plays in your organization. If you are expected to be a major capital philanthropic arm, then there needs to be a mutual understanding of what that is going to take: giving by the board, CEO speaking the mission and vision in the community, philanthropy as PART of the strategic plan, not an afterthought, a focus on RELATIONSHIPS not ROI, the list goes on.

If the CEO, board, etc are not willing to do those things, then go back to the drawing board. But IF they are and IF philanthropy is important, then your donors are important. If your donors are important, who they are, where they have been, why they are engaged, what role they want/can play for your organization are ALL important. The minute development officers are encouraged to establish relationships, build and grow them carefully and with passion, that ROI is going to increase. If the only message your development staff/you are hearing is - raise more money, NOW, make more calls, NOW, burn and churn, I can promise you, sustainability and growth in philanthropic revenue are NOT in your future.

It's time we change our own culture of philanthropy in the fund development world. We have been so worried about changing the culture within our organization that we've forgotten to look inward. I'm ready to change that.