To Sell is Human; To Give, Divine – Why We’re All in Fundraising Now

Philanthropy; Not Fundraising

I recently attended an inspiring talk by Daniel Pink, author of To Sell Is Human, and found myself furiously taking notes.  Next thing you know I was impulsively buying the book (autographed, of course)! Do I have buyer’s remorse? Absolutely not. Zero. Zilch. Nada. Everything he has to say is so directly applicable to fundraising and the nonprofit sector that [IMHO] it’s a ‘must read’ for those of us in the philanthropy business. Here’s why:

We erroneously think “selling” is bad.   In fact, it’s probably even more of a taboo word in nonprofits than the word “fundraising.” People just don’t like it. Pink did an experiment where he asked people to give him the first word that came to their minds when they thought of “sales/selling.”  They answered with such words as:

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Get Wise to What Your Nonprofit Blog Readers Want – Coda to the C.P.A. Series

Listen, listenThey want you to show them that you know them. And we do this best by listening.

I’m compelled to add this coda to the C.P.A. series because there’s some breaking news that pertains to what was one of my favorite listening tools. In Part I we covered the fact that key to writing a post  folks will want to read is first finding out what folks want to hear! One of those tools, sadly, just kicked the proverbial bucket.  Yet I’ve also discovered a host of new tools that may be extremely useful to you in your research. Yup, the universe taketh away; the universe giveth.

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