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Leaping Clairity Click-it: Nonprofit Links + Free Resources

This week, before we get to all the resources I’ve curated to help you do great work, these questions from the always sage Seth Godin bear your consideration.

Direct questions worth answering

For everyone on the team…

Do you care enough to do great work?

Can we agree on what great work looks like?

When the world changes, do we have a process to redefine great work?

Do you have the tools you need to reach your goals?

How could we create a system where great work is easier to do?

— Seth Godin

Think about it, okay? If you really dig into these questions, both as an individual and as a team, you may be surprised by some of the answers.

Here’s the deal: If you can’t define the problem, you can’t arrive at a solution.  Alas, we work on the wrong problems all the time. They aren’t the ones that really matter. At least not to most of the people. Maybe not even to you.  Maybe they should matter, but there’s no way to figure that out unless you stop to think, ponder and explore.

Here’s my challenge to you: Will you calendar some time to ask and answer these questions within the next 45 days? Ideally, do it with some team members. Find out what’s holding you back from doing truly great work. Then endeavor to find some strategies to move yourselves onward and upward.

Okay – on to this week’s issue!

As always, a big thank you to my sponsor, Bloomerang, for making it possible for me to spend the hours of time hunting, gathering and choosing the resources I believe will be most useful to you.

It is my sincere pleasure and honor to help you find the ideas, strategies, templates and tools you need to succeed.

Thank you for doing your vital work, and making our world a better place,

Claire

claire@clairification.com

P.S. Please scroll down to see all my Clairification School sponsors who enable me to offer enrollment in ‘Clairification School at an affordable price [NOTE: If the enrollment fee is a hardship, please email me and we’ll work it out.]

Clairity Click-it, Your Nonprofit Ticket to…

Love is in the Air Clairity Click-it: Nonprofit Links + Free Resources

Good (February holiday) news department, and couldn’t we use some!

• The groundhog predicted an early spring.
• The Year of the Dragon means good fortune.
• Valentine’s Day reminds us to come from a place of love
• President’s Day gives a long weekend (in the U.S.) to relax

But one of my favorites, on February 17th, is little known, and perfect for the social benefit sector. It’s Random Acts of Kindness Day!

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to shower your donors — and everyone you can think of (co-workers, volunteers, family, friends and even strangers ) — with acts of kindness. Think about what you can do to make someone’s day. There’s no better way to build a loyal, loving relationship than to give more than you receive.

Get creative!

If you’re fortunate (and you will be because, after all, it’s the Year of the Dragon!), this issue of the Clairity Click-it will help you discover new ways to love your supporters. There’s no surer way to energize and enthuse yourself as you work towards guiding others on the pathway to passionate philanthropy. As always, you’ll find a range of voices from across the nonprofit world so you can resource, learn and digest at your own pace, coming to your own decisions. 

Speaking of acts of kindness, I’ve also got a little piece of wisdom to share with you from Mr. Rogers:

“Imagine what our real neighborhoods would be like if each of us offered, as a matter of course, just one kind word to another person.”

As always, a big thank you to my sponsor, Bloomerang, for making it possible for me to spend the hours of time hunting, gathering and choosing the resources I believe will be most useful to you.

It is my sincere pleasure and honor to help you find the ideas, strategies, templates and tools you need to succeed.

Thank you for doing your vital work, and making our world a better place,

Claire

claire@clairification.com

P.S. Please scroll down to see all my Clairification School sponsors who enable me to offer enrollment in ‘Clairification School at an affordable price [NOTE: If the enrollment fee is a hardship, please email me and we’ll work it out.]

Clairity Click-it, Your Nonprofit Ticket to…

Brr… Clairity Click-it: Nonprofit Links + Free Resources

It’s been pretty cold in my neck of the woods, so let’s warm up with a cup of cocoa, coffee or tea and some good reads. I’ve got a lot of great stuff for you this week, so let’s get right to it!

The Clairity Click-it exists to bring you a range of voices from across the nonprofit world so you can resource, learn and digest at your own pace, coming to your own decisions. My hope is some of the free resources I’ve collected and curated for you will energize and enthuse you as you work towards guiding others on the pathway to passionate philanthropy.

As always, I’ve also got a little piece of wisdom to share with you from the inimitable Seth Godin:

The generous ask

“If you don’t ask, you don’t get.”

That’s problematic advice.

Taken to an extreme, it turns us into hustlers.

The alternative is to realize that the best asks are actually offers.

When we offer to help someone get to where they were going, we’re approaching the relationship with generosity, not selfishness.

What work would we need to do to have sufficient skill, insight and reputation to be able to offer someone else a chance to reach their goals? That’s how we get. Not by asking, but by offering.

Always remember to make your ask an offer.  Show your supporters the opportunity involved – for them – in becoming more engaged and invested in your mission. Bring them joy, purpose and meaning, and they’ll do the same for you.

As always, a big thank you to my sponsor, Bloomerang, for making it possible for me to spend the hours of time hunting, gathering and choosing the resources I believe will be most useful to you.

It is my sincere pleasure and honor to help you find the ideas, strategies, templates and tools you need to succeed.

Thank you for doing your vital work, and making our world a better place,

Claire

claire@clairification.com

P.S. Please scroll down to see all my Clairification School sponsors who enable me to offer enrollment in ‘Clairification School at an affordable price [NOTE: If the enrollment fee is a hardship, please email me and we’ll work it out.]

Clairity Click-it, Your Nonprofit Ticket to…

Let Freedom Ring Clairity Click-it: Nonprofit Links + Free Resources

The upcoming Martin Luther King Day holiday in the U.S. has me thinking about freedom. And also the push/pull between freedom and responsibility. Freedom without responsibility (i.e., being held responsible for your actions) doesn’t work well for anyone but one person. Responsibility without freedom is stressful. To work well, they need to play well together. Neither freedom nor responsibility are given; they’re taken.

What will you do to achieve the necessary balance to keep your organization, your community, and our world in check?

Seth Godin suggests it has a lot to do with the culture you/we build.

The freedom loop

We spend almost no time teaching toddlers about freedom. Instead, the lessons we teach (and learn) for our entire lives are about responsibility. It’s easy to teach freedom, but important to teach responsibility. Because if you get the responsibility taken care of, often the freedom will follow.

When someone points out a lack of responsibility, it can feel like an affront on freedom, when it’s actually a chance to create more freedom for the rest of the community.

You can drive as fast as you want. But you are also responsible for not running over someone in a school zone…

The speed limit is not taking away our freedom, it’s reminding us of our responsibility.

When we build a culture of people who eagerly seek out and take responsibility, we build a culture that enables a special kind of resilient freedom.

— Seth Godin

I hope you will make this the year you really work on instilling a culture of philanthropy — love of humankind. It will make all the rest of your work easier, more fulfilling and, ultimately, more fruitful. This first Clairity Click-it of 2024 is filled with a mix of topics to help you begin the coming year thoughtfully. I encourage you to dig through this curated content from across the web and pick one or more doable strategies. Approach this with a learning mindset, vowing to find at least one thing you’ll do a bit differently.

As always, a big thank you to my sponsor, Bloomerang, for making it possible for me to spend the hours of time hunting, gathering and choosing the resources I believe will be most useful to you.

It is my sincere pleasure and honor to help you find the ideas, strategies, templates and tools you need to succeed.

Thank you for doing your vital work, and making our world a better place,

Claire

claire@clairification.com

P.S. Please scroll down to see all my Clairification School sponsors who enable me to offer enrollment in ‘Clairification School at an affordable price [NOTE: If the enrollment fee is a hardship, please email me and we’ll work it out.]

Clairity Click-it, Your Nonprofit Ticket to…

New Year Clairity Click-it: Nonprofit Links + Free Resources

Let’s begin with this week’s bit of wisdom…

 

Generosity and gratitude

A gift doesn’t diminish the giver. Sharing creates connection, possibility and energy.

And the magic of gratitude is that it improves everything it touches, especially the person who offered it in the first place.

So, what holds us back?

Fear. Fear of connection, of change, of seeing what is possible. It might feel safer to focus on scarcity.

Generosity and gratitude often go together. They light a path on the way to better.

— Seth Godin

Of course, I led with that sage advice because now is the time for channeling as much gratitude as you can muster. All those year-end donations you received? If you want them to be repeated in the coming year, there’s nothing more important that you can do. As I wrote in this week’s blog post on Clairification: Don’t Blow Your Post-Holiday Opportunity to Thank Your Nonprofit Supporters.

This last Clairity Click-it of 2023 is filled with a mix of topics to help you begin the coming year thoughtfully. I encourage you to dig through this curated content from across the web and pick one or more doable strategies. Approach this with a learning mindset, vowing to find at least one thing you’ll do a bit differently (if not today, then tomorrow; save the idea and put it on your calendar so you’re sure to revisit it at the appropriate time).

As always, a big thank you to my sponsor, Bloomerang, for making it possible for me to spend the hours of time hunting, gathering and choosing the resources I believe will be most useful to you.

It is my sincere pleasure and honor to help you find the ideas, strategies, templates and tools you need to succeed.

Thank you for doing your vital work, and making our world a better place,

Claire

claire@clairification.com

P.S. Please scroll down to see all my Clairification School sponsors who enable me to offer enrollment in ‘Clairification School at an affordable price [If the enrollment fee is a hardship, please email me and we’ll work it out.]

Clairity Click-it, Your Nonprofit Ticket to…

Year-End Clairity Click-it: Nonprofit Links + Free Resources

Here’s a bit of wisdom that really spoke to me this week, especially as we navigate this particular season at this particular moment in our shared world…

Throwing shade or throwing light?

“One takes a little more effort than the other.

While throwing shade might be more fun, it eventually runs out of energy. It’s designed to end conversations, not start them, to intimidate, not encourage.

Turning on lights helps everyone.”

— Seth Godin

This week’s Clairity Click-it is dedicated to turning on the lights. For you as a practitioner, but also for you as a person. A person helping turn on the lights for other people. A person helping those other people turn on the lights for still more people. And so on and so forth. Until the ripples and rays of light shine so brightly there is no dark corner where sorrow, poverty, illness, despair, cruelty, bigotry, ignorance or injustice can hide.

As I shared in the last issue of this newsletter, Seth Godin also notes: “Generosity and gratitude often go together. They light a path on the way to better.” 

The content I’ve collected is all designed to light the way forward so you can inspire others to join your important mission to make our world a better place. I encourage you to dig through this curated content from across the web and pick one or more doable strategies. Approach this with a learning mindset, vowing to find at least one thing you’ll do a bit differently (if not today, then tomorrow; save the idea and put it on your calendar so you’re sure to revisit it at the appropriate time). As always, a big thank you to my sponsor, Bloomerang, for making it possible for me to spend the hours of time hunting, gathering and choosing the resources I believe will be most useful to you.

It is my sincere pleasure and honor to help you find the ideas, strategies, templates and tools you need to succeed.

Thank you for doing your vital work, and making our world a better place,

Claire

claire@clairification.com

P.S. Please scroll down to see all my Clairification School sponsors who enable me to offer enrollment in ‘Clairification School at an affordable price [If the enrollment fee is a hardship, please email me and we’ll work it out.]

Clairity Click-it, Your Nonprofit Ticket to…

Grateful Clairity Click-it: Nonprofit Links + Free Resources

Let’s begin with this week’s bit of wisdom…

“Let us conceive of gratitude in its largest, most beautiful sense, that if we receive any kindness we are debtor, not merely to one man, but to the whole world. As we are each day indebted to thousands for the comforts, joys, consolations, and blessings of life, let us realize that it is only by kindness to all that we can begin to repay the debt to one, begin to make gratitude the atmosphere of all our living and a constant expression in outward acts, rather than in mere thoughts. 

Let us see the awful cowardice and the injustice of ingratitude, not to take it too seriously in others, not to condemn it too severely, but merely to banish it forever from our own lives, and to make every hour of our living the radiation of the sweetness of gratitude.”

— William George Jordan, The Courage to Face Ingratitude

As you’re planning ahead, and readying your year-end fundraising initiatives, take a little time to think about what, and who, you are grateful for. Approaching this time of year from a place of abundance rather than scarcity will not only reduce your stress but will also inspire people to want to join your mission. We all prefer to join a rising tide rather than a sinking boat. Optimism is contagious, and will motivate people to connect with you. And stick with you. Because… it feels good. 

The magic of gratitude is it improves everything it touches, you included. As Seth Godin notes: “Generosity and gratitude often go together. They light a path on the way to better.” 

So, as you enter the year-end scramble for donor dollars, don’t forget to express gratitude. Donor generosity will follow. In this regard, I commend this article from Steven Screen of The Better Fundraising Co.: The Antidote to Fundraising Fear Is…

This week’s Clairity Click-it will give you help to move forward with the best approaches. As always, I encourage you to dig through this curated content from across the web and pick one or more doable strategies. Approach this with a learning mindset, vowing to find at least one thing you’ll do a bit differently (if not today, then tomorrow; save the idea and put it on your calendar so you’re sure to revisit it at the appropriate time). As always, a big thank you to my sponsor, Bloomerang, for making it possible for me to spend the hours of time hunting, gathering and choosing the resources I believe will be most useful to you.

It is my sincere pleasure and honor to help you find the ideas, strategies, templates and tools you need to succeed.

Thank you for doing your vital work, and making our world a better place,

Claire

claire@clairification.com

P.S. Please scroll down to see all my Clairification School sponsors who enable me to offer enrollment in ‘Clairification School at an affordable price [If the enrollment fee is a hardship, please email me and we’ll work it out.]

Clairity Click-it, Your Nonprofit Ticket to…

Clairity Click-it: Cornucopia of Nonprofit Links + Free Resources

Let’s begin with this week’s bit of wisdom…

The reluctant spammer

“I don’t want to send this pitch to a list of every single podcaster in the world, but we have to get the word out.”

“I don’t want to send an email to every one of our previous donors every three days until they unsubscribe, but our work is so important, it has to be done.”

“I don’t want to robocall every person in the district, but if I don’t, our campaign has no chance… the other guy is even more aggressive than we are.”

Except there’s an “except.”

Except that all the organizations before you that have reluctantly raced to the bottom aren’t happy that they did. They’re not thriving and they might not even be around any more.

The reason that our attention has been strip-mined is that the system that evolved seems to reward short-term players that take the direct, easy, and lazy way out. While it seems like we have no choice, in fact, we have a very obvious one.

It turns out that finding, connecting and respecting a small group of supporters and customers always outperforms the hustle for more. And that if you can create a remarkable story that’s worth spreading, it’ll spread. Not because you need it to, but because your customers do.

Reluctant or not, spam is still spam. If you can’t imagine wanting to receive it, don’t send it.

— Seth Godin

Read Godin’s last paragraph and last sentence again. As you enter the year-end scramble for donor dollars, don’t forget to be human.  It’s important to connect at this most generous time of year. But the operative word here is “connect.” Think from your message recipient’s perspective. Ask: How will they feel when they see, hear or read this? What will it incline them to do? If your answer is not the result you want, re-think your strategy.

I hope you’ll use some of the wisdom offered in this week’s Clairity Click-it to help you move forward with the best solutions. Start digging through the curated content from across the web and pick one or more doable strategies. Whatever you do, don’t do nothing!

As always, a big thank you to my sponsor, Bloomerang, for making it possible for me to spend the hours of time hunting, gathering and choosing the ideas, strategies, templates and tools you need to succeed.

Thank you for doing your vital work, and making our world a better place,

Claire

claire@clairification.com

P.S. Please scroll down to see all my Clairification School sponsors who enable me to offer enrollment in ‘Clairification School at an affordable price [If the enrollment fee is a hardship, please email me and we’ll work it out.]

Clairity Click-it, Your Nonprofit Ticket to…

Falling Back* Clairity Click-it: Nonprofit Links + Free Resources

Let’s begin with this week’s bit of wisdom…

Confusion and certainty

When facing a complex problem, it’s easy to become confused.

Lately, it’s become socially acceptable to express your confusion with certainty. Untrained in the field, make a pronouncement that makes it clear that you have not just an understanding of what’s going on, but also that you’ve figured out the causes and the next steps.

The thing is, confusion shared often leads to the learning we need to become productive as we move forward. “I don’t understand this part,” is a great thing to say before someone helps you understand it.

On the other hand, certainty is almost guaranteed to maintain your confusion, particularly when the thing you were sure was going to work, doesn’t.

— Seth Godin

This spoke to me this week, as we are surely living in confusing, uncertain times.  Have you succumbed to the temptation to assuredly pontificate, taking a position that’s probably an inch deep? To really be sure, what other information could/should you seek?

This “confusion and certainty” conundrum plays out in both our personal and professional lives. When I was in law school, I learned to “plausibly assert, and forcefully maintain.” This may be good for winning lawsuits, but does it contribute to a just, fair and greater good?

I would say “not so much.”  And in your role as a nonprofit professional or volunteer, you want to contribute more than simply confusion painted over with lipstick. You want answers – but, first, you must ask the right questions.

The Clairity Click-it is designed to provide you with content to help you better understand your challenges so you can move forward with the best solutions. Use some of the resources in this week’s issue to help you pick one or more doable strategies. Start digging through the curated content from across the web and, whatever you do, don’t do nothing!

As always, a big thank you to my sponsor, Bloomerang, for making it possible for me to spend the hours of time hunting, gathering and choosing the resources I believe will be most useful to you.

It is my sincere pleasure and honor to help you find the ideas, strategies, templates and tools you need to succeed.

Thank you for doing your vital work, and making our world a better place,

Claire

claire@clairification.com

P.S. Please scroll down to see all my Clairification School sponsors who enable me to offer enrollment in ‘Clairification School at an affordable price [If the enrollment fee is a hardship, please email me and we’ll work it out.]

*If you live where this weekend ends daylight savings time, don’t forget to “fall back” and grab your extra hour this Sunday. 🙂

Clairity Click-it, Your Nonprofit Ticket to…

BOO-t-ful Clairity Click-it: Nonprofit Links + Free Resources

Throwing shade or throwing light?

One takes a little more effort than the other.

While throwing shade might be more fun, it eventually runs out of energy. It’s designed to end conversations, not start them, to intimidate, not encourage.

Turning on lights helps everyone.

— Seth Godin

You are on a meaning-seeking journey. Through your work, you create positive change and make lives easier and better. One person, family, community, region at a time.  Your donors seek the same.

Part of your job is to bring meaning, not just to the beneficiaries of your organization’s mission but also to the people who contribute towards your meaningful outcomes.

It turns out when you consider what brings meaning and value to philanthropists – donors and volunteers – you do a more effective job creating abundance all around.

Use some of the resources in this week’s issue of the Clairity Click-it to help you on your journey. And to help your supporters on theirs. Whatever your role, you’ll find something in this issue to nourish you. So, start digging through the curated content from across the web. I hope it will make your job easier, and more fulfilling. Get curious!

As always, a big thank you to my sponsor, Bloomerang, for making it possible for me to spend the hours of time hunting, gathering and choosing the resources I believe will be most useful to you.

It is my sincere pleasure and honor to help you find the ideas, strategies, templates and tools you need to succeed.

Thank you for doing your vital work, and making our world a better place,

Claire

claire@clairification.com

P.S. Please scroll down to see all my Clairification School sponsors who enable me to offer enrollment in ‘Clairification School at an affordable price [If the enrollment fee is a hardship, please email me and we’ll work it out.]

Clairity Click-it, Your Nonprofit Ticket to…