Olympic flag

Lift Up Your Nonprofit Donors with Their Olympic Moment

Olympic flag

“Give me one moment in time.

When I’m more than I thought could be.

When all of my dreams are a heartbeat away.

And the answers are all up to me.”

Ah, the lyrics remembered from a Whitney Houston song sung at the 1988 Olympics Opening Ceremonies.  The Olympic torch. The parade of nations. The stories, stories and stories.

Chills run down my spine.  The hairs stand straight on my neck.  A lump comes to my throat.

Cheesy, I know.  But it gets to me.

We all yearn for that one moment where we step outside our daily, mundane lives and exceed our wildest expectations.

When we’re bigger than ourselves.

We can’t all be gold medal athletes, but we can all be gold medal philanthropists.

And gold medal philanthropy facilitators.

The Olympics lifts us up.  At its best, philanthropy does this as well.

It inspires us.

It engages us fully.

It’s as addictive as chocolate when done right.

In fact, MRI data show us when people even simply contemplate giving, the pleasure centers of their brain light up. The very same area of the brain that lights up when we eat chocolate! One might call this the “philanthropic high.”

And, unlike other addictions, this one is good for us!

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Expert Secrets; 80-20 Rule

3 Nonprofit Secrets to Rock Major Gift Fundraising

Expert Secrets; 80-20 RuleThere’s a treasure trove of knowledge and research around major gift fundraising. What works well.  What doesn’t work at all.  What’s, at best, half-baked.

It’s not rocket science.  But there’s definitely art, and some science, involved.

The gestalt way of thinking about the three secrets boils down to simply being:

(1) SMART,

(2) SYSTEMATIC and

(3) PASSIONATE.

But, I’m pretty pragmatic. So I’d like to give you something more practical.

If I had to pick the top three practical secrets to success, they would be the following:

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4th-of-july-dog-overloaded-257x300.jpg

Declare Your Independence Day – Information Overload Be Gone!

4th of july patriotic dog

Feeling a bit overloaded?

It’s the new plague. And a highly contagious epidemic, from which no one is immune.

Are you showing any symptoms?

I feel like:

  • I’m working all the time, but not getting that much accomplished.
  • I’m working on 10 projects at once, but none get finished.
  • My ‘to-do’ list never gets completed.
  • I’m in meetings all day and don’t have time to work.
  • I bring my laptop to meetings and pretend to take notes while surfing the web.
  • I’m answering email all day and don’t have time to work.
  • I answer email during conference calls and in meetings.
  • I have less and less time to plan, not to mention free time.
  • I have less and less time to learn, not to mention creative time.
  • I can never get to things quickly enough.
  • I sit down at my computer and end up doing something different than I planned.
  • I am eating lunch at my desk, mired in my virtual inbox.
  • I make calls while driving, and even send the occasional text, even though I know I shouldn’t.

Informationoverloaditis.

If you checked off three or more, you’ve got the disease. 8 or more and we need to rush you to an unplugged vacation. All of the above and you need a sabbatical!

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Whiteboard planning session

Nonprofit Strategy: Three Things to Cleverly Finagle

Whiteboard planning sessionOnce upon a time I let folks know I’d “finagled” a discount for them. After one reader told me the word “finagle” means “to obtain something by devious or dishonest means,” I sent an apologetic “Ruh Roh” email. I received a lot of forgiving (thank you!) feedback. Many kindly supported my initial use of the word “finagle.”

Apparently, there is more than one definition of finagle.

Susan sent me this:

finagle (third-person singular simple present finagles, present participle finagling, simple past and past participle finagled)

    1. (transitive) To obtain, arrange, or achieve by indirect, complicated and/or intensive efforts.

finagle a day off work

    1. (transitive) To obtain, arrange, or achieve by deceitful methods, by trickery.

finagled his way out of a ticket by pretending to be on the way to a funeral, distraught

I think the word has come to mean “using super-human negotiating skill to obtain a superior result“

Terry sent me this:

I thought you meant “obtain (something) by indirect or involved means.” I always felt it was sort of clever or creative negotiations to get something done when it seemed like it couldn’t be done. 

Sam sent me this:

I always thought it was someone who could manipulate circumstances to achieve a goal. No adverse implications. No criminal intent. Just clever in being able to make something work that really shouldn’t have worked.

And there were more. I thank you all.

You made me think.

And not just about negotiation (which is a subject unto itself), but about being clever.

And thoughtful.

And about what it takes to obtain superior results.

All good outcomes require a little positive finagling to get there.

Lots of things can be good and bad at the same time.

For example,

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