Wild Woman Fundraising

Hi! Thanks for reading this series on how to manage and motivate others by discovering their strengths and helping them find tasks that they can excel in! These descriptions are taken from the book, “Now, Discover your Strengths” by Marcus Buckingham and Donald Clifton, and I am indebted to them for their years of research [...]

How can you discover your strengths? How do you manage people? Have you taken the Gallup assessment, which was given to over 2 million people, and provided insights on 34 types you might have to manage at work? This can be an invaluable tool as you help people discover their strengths, and focus on these [...]

How can you motivate others? In three words: Strengths based management. What are your strengths? This post should help you. Here’s how it works. People naturally tend to want their autonomy, to want self-direction in their tasks, and to want to use their areas of greatest strength at work. This is based on surveys of [...]

Here is a Fundraising Plan Checklist that you can use every time you start a new appeal, campaign, event, or grant proposal. How much do we want to raise? Are you going to try to raise $3,000 with your annual report? Are you going to try to raise $20,000 with an event? What is a [...]

Are you the lone development person, or even part of a small team? What is one of your biggest problems? If you answered “Capacity” I think you’d be right. How can you build your capacity to raise more money? Well, you can’t put more hours in the day, and you can’t hire more people. Budgets [...]

If you are fundraising in a small shop, I salute you. It is hard. You come to work and often receive no kudos or respect for what you do. I want you to know that I know what you’re going through. And I appreciate that you take a small part of your limited time to read this.

One thing I learned when I was volunteering at nonprofits overseas is that people don’t necessarily need what you think they need.

Do you get to do things you like to do, when you volunteer? Or do you feel taken advantage of?

So, you’re talking to a donor and the first thing they want to know is: How much of this donation goes to the cause?

This has become the only standard by which a nonprofit is judged deserving on funds. And this is truly sad.

When you discourage long-term vision, you institutionalize suffering.

When funders and donors have a need for immediate gratification, your nonprofit always loses.