Posts Tagged ‘Page to Practice’

12 tips for starting your fundraising committee

In light of our recent Page to Practice feature of Emily Davis’ Fundraising and the Next Generation, I thought you’d enjoy her recent blog about the twelve steps involved with starting a fundraising committee samsung photo editor herunterladen.

Frequently, I’m asked about steps nonprofits can take in starting a nonprofit fundraising committee. Below are some ways that you can start out in organizing a team of volunteer fund raisers for your organizational mission herunterladen.

1. Have a committee description. How can volunteers know what you need them to do without instruction? Start with a committee description that includes as much detail as possible like committee activities, meeting times and length, preferred skills and qualifications, and any other logistics you would want to know if you were joining the committee skype android herunterladen kostenlos.

2. Be clear about your committee name. The words “fundraising” and “committee” can scare some people away. Another option is to call your committee the “Resource Development Team.” It sends a slightly different message that this is a team of leaders who are leveraging not just dollars, but also resources of all kinds for the mission and cause euro truck simulator 2 for free.

3. Identify board leadership. One of the best practices in nonprofit leadership is to make sure that your organizational any committees are led by active board members flight simulator x download vollversion kostenlos deutsch. Board members serve as ambassadors for your organization – both with internal and external networks. Having board members lead committees allows there to be seamless connection between the board and committees with communications, activities, reporting, etc sketch app kostenlos herunterladen.

4. Share your Fundraising Plan. Every organization should have a plan for their resource development strategies, whether it is a simple or a complex plan download children's fonts. Share that plan with your Fundraising Committee and ask them to provide feedback as well as take specific projects. Review the plan annually and find out what worked well, which goals need to be amended, and what just is not realistic herunterladen. The plan helps with measurement and evaluation as well.

5. Provide staff support. Do not expect that you will create a Fundraising Committee and they will magically begin fundraising millions of dollars herunterladen. Very few people are fundraising experts, so realize your staff is going to be the key to the committee members’ successes in many ways. Your staff is on the ground and working with stakeholders every day mit welcher app kann man youtube videos downloaden iphone. Create opportunities for the staff to share and support the committee’s efforts. Train staff members how to lead, not just manage, the committee. Leaders breed leaders – this is a great opportunity for staff members to support and engage volunteers in a leadership capacity.

6. Offer trainings. Other ways to support your committee is to provide them with in-service trainings or share regular training opportunities through other organizations like your local nonprofit association. Investing small amounts of money in trainings can have a great return on investment in terms of fundraising from your committee members. It also shows a value in the committee members and your appreciation for their volunteer work. Read the next six steps at Davis’ blog.

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Eight must-know grassroots concepts

For every position there is an opposition herunterladen. It’s what makes our democracy work. If you lead a nonprofit organization, there’s no doubt an issue or candidate can influence how effectively you raise money or advocate for systemic change dropbox voor pc downloaden. Some even argue an investment in advocacy is an “upstream solution” and preferable to isolated direct service downstream.

The One-Hour Activist: The 15 Most Powerful Actions You Can Take to Fight for the Issues and Candidates You Care About presents a nonpartisan, thorough checklist of tactical best practices for engaging in advocacy on behalf of issues and candidates you care about iphone lieder downloaden.

Author Christopher Kush has distilled the essential activities that will help you understand how your letter, email or request for a face-to-face meeting with your lawmaker can be heard above the noise instagram logo kostenlos. He covers nuances in relating to your elected officials, leveraging the media, navigating public hearings, analyzing bills, joining public interest groups and much more adobe rechnungen downloaden. The book title may say 15, but Kush highlights 20 specific actions that can advance your cause.

In Part One of Kush’s book, he emphasizes eight important grassroots concepts and I’ll share them with you:

1) Voting isn’t enough herunterladen. Once you’ve gotten your candidate elected, you can’t expect issues to go your way; the work has only begun.
2) Geography is the single most important thing about you and your issue zoom.us. If you live in the elected official’s district, he/she wants to make you happy. Period.
3) One angry letter won’t change the world herunterladen.
4) Instant grassroots (like signing online petitions) is not especially effective. Personalized letters with individual anecdotes and stories are virus protection program for free.
5) Money is part of the game. If you refuse to take out your checkbook, you’re leaving an important weapon out of your arsenal.
6) Elected officials are real people with all the complexity and imperfection that implies herunterladen. Genuinely try to understand who your elected officials are.
7) One successful grassroots campaign will not settle your issues once and for all. The issues worth fighting for will be ongoing, long-term battles.
8) “Staying on message” is the ultimate law of grassroots activism. Everyone who cares about a given issue must make the same exact request, no matter how individualized his/her justification for that request is.

Watch for more highlights in the coming weeks about The One-Hour Activist by Christopher Kush.

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If 70 percent of change efforts fail…

Dr imgburn deutsch kostenlosen. John Kotter is the foremost authority on organizational change, and the last decade of his research on the subject has culminated into an exciting discovery that’s covered in A Sense of Urgency herunterladen. A sense of urgency is an important theme in all aspects of leading change, according to Kotter.

Seventy percent fail

We’ve learned from Kotter’s research that 70 percent of large-scale change efforts fail, the successful cases benefit from sufficient urgency and enthusiasm at the start, in other words, “enough buy-in from a critical mass of employees who make the desired change happen.” A Sense of Urgency takes a good look at urgency and how to create it while not confusing it with false urgency or cloaking it in complacency battlefield 1 for free.

Here are two interview questions I asked Dr. Kotter on the topic when we posted our Page to Practice™ feature of A Sense of Urgency at CausePlanet:

CausePlanet: Your book nailed my initial perception in the opening line of the preface: “This is a book about a seemingly narrow issue…” Seemingly is the key point here call of duty modern warfare kostenlos downloaden. Will you please explain how your deeper look at urgency revealed an important theme in all aspects of leading change?

John Kotter: Sense of Urgency was borne out of a decade of research and writing on how individuals can lead successful change in their organizations a1 servicecenter downloaden. In study after study and in conversation after conversation with managers and senior leaders, it became clear it all starts with urgency.
Seventy percent of large-scale change efforts fail; just 10 percent succeed beyond expectations videos downloaden ipad 2. In every case, generating sufficient urgency and enthusiasm at the start—enough to win buy-in from a critical mass of employees and to move them to devote the time and energy necessary to drive change forward—proved to be the defining factor fifa mobil herunterladen. In today’s fast-paced, turbulent world, that gut-level determination to win and win now is more important than ever before.

CausePlanet: You explain that complacency is the lesser of evils when compared to false urgency herunterladen. Can you please explain why for our readers?

John Kotter: First, let’s look at the difference between complacency and false urgency amazon music alle herunterladen. In an organization where complacency is prevalent, people rest on their past successes. They are content with the status quo. They are inwardly focused, unaware of the rapidly changing world around them and the hazards and opportunities that come with it bendy herunterladen. And even if they recognize there are challenges out there, they leave it to others to address them. That sort of contentment can be disastrous for an organization.

Many mangers think complacency can be remedied with lots of energetic activity. They send people running from meeting to meeting, push them to tackle task after task, assign them to this task force or that project team. With all that activity, they feel they’ve driven their people to abandon the status quo and have created a sense of urgency for change. But it’s just not true. What they are actually witnessing is false urgency, unfocused flurries of activity that are distracting and unproductive. And they are even more dangerous than complacency because they sap the energy needed to achieve real and lasting change.

Watch for more of my interview with John Kotter next week and visit www.KotterInternational.com for more information about his books.

See also:

Buy-In: Saving Your Good Ideas From Getting Shot Down
The Three Laws of Performance

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Is your sense of urgency working for or against you?

Due to the overextended and under-resourced nature of the nonprofit sector, it’s easy to look around your organization and misdiagnose your busy staff and hyperactive meeting schedule as having a sense of urgency netflix film downloaden ipad. A Sense of Urgency author, John Kotter, argues otherwise.

Is your urgency true or false ios 12.2 herunterladen? Organizations that are truly inspiring transformative change don’t suffer from endless busy work; the employees have a sense of purpose, an emotional attachment to the aspirational goal and shed low-priority activities in pursuit of meaningful milestones that mark progress play store mobile phone. The social sector is a breeding ground for these false diagnoses of urgency, and nonprofit leaders must root out busy work in favor of smarter, inspired progress toward game-changing goals herunterladen.

What’s the single biggest error people make? Two years prior to publishing A Sense of Urgency, it occurred to Kotter how often he was being asked, “What is the single biggest error people make when they try to change?” More than 10 years of research, hundreds of interviews with managers and three books on the subject told him leaders did not create a high enough sense of urgency among enough people to set the stage for making a challenging leap into some new direction ring herunterladen.

What managers had to say This observation inspired Kotter to test the idea and probe deeper by systematically asking managers a new set of questions download sims for free. For example, “How high is the sense of urgency among relevant people around you?” And, “If it’s too low, what exactly are you doing to change this fact?”

Here are the interesting conclusions resulting from these questions:

1. At the beginning of an effort to create change, if a sense of urgency is not high enough and complacency is not low enough, everything else becomes so much more difficult herunterladen.
2. Complacency is much more common than we might think and very often invisible to the people involved. Success easily produces complacency and it doesn’t have to be recent herunterladen.
3. The opposite of urgency is not only complacency, but false or misguided urgency which is more insidious. False urgency is driven by anxiety, anger and frustration facebook complete album. It’s characterized by a frantic feeling.
4. Mistaking what you might call false urgency for real urgency is a huge problem today.
5. It is possible to recognize false urgency and complacency and transform them into a true sense of urgency windows phone apps herunterladen. The book describes these strategies.
6. Urgency is becoming increasingly important because change is shifting from episodic to continuous. Continuous change requires sustaining urgency.

Visit www.KotterInternational.com for more information about the John Kotter and his best-selling books.

See also:

Buy-In: Saving Your Good Ideas From Getting Shot Down

The Three Laws of Performance

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Get better fundraising results from your board

We’ve all been there herunterladen. And if you haven’t been there, you’ve at least heard about someone who’s been there. Yesterday, during our live author interview series with board fundraising expert, Kay Sprinkel Grace, we had a nonprofit leader ask, “What recommendations do you have for getting better fundraising results out of your board?”

Most commonly asked

How to get everyone involved in fundraising is the most common question Grace is asked and this author interview was no exception pictures editing program for free. In fact, Grace has written a book about her answer to this popular inquiry: The AAA Way to Fundraising Success.

A board fundraising idea is born

The inspiration for Kay’s book was a client she worked with 12 years ago youtube to mp3 complete playlist. The nonprofit client said, “I’ve got seven askers on my board.” Grace congratulated her for having seven folks who were willing to step up and make “the ask” on behalf of the nonprofit podcast download mobile phone. Then the client said, “No, I have 39 on my board and only seven askers. What am I going to do with the other 32?”

How it works

This scenario became the brainchild for a management tool that Grace actively uses today herunterladen. The process begins with asking your board to choose from three different roles in fundraising: 1) Ambassador, 2) Advocate, and 3) Asker. Then you spread the choices your board members have made on a matrix and develop a plan based on who will ask, advocate or serve as ambassador leyo app herunterladen. “Because board members have chosen the role they want to play, their willingness to fulfill the identified role is amazing,” says Grace. Grace’s number one rule in this AAA program is that everyone is at least an ambassador stardew valley.

Who makes the ask

Grace also impressed upon yesterday’s interview attendees that having a volunteer (advocate) and someone from the programming staff join you or the director of development on the ask proves essential verben. The program staff can speak specifically and intelligently about how the gift impacts outcomes. The board member (volunteer advocate) can speak from a mission and vision perspective herunterladen.
More info

More info about Grace’s books

You can find out more about Grace’s AAA program in her book, The AAA Way to Fundraising Success at http://www.whitpress.com/ or her other six books at http://www.kaygrace.com/ whatsapp update android herunterladen. Grace’s latest book, The Ultimate Board Member’s Book, is currently featured at CausePlanet with a Page to Practice book summary.

See also :

Exposing the Elephants: Creating Exceptional Nonprofits

The Nonprofit Leadership Team: Building the Board – Executive Director Partnership

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Board fundraising: Ask people to act on their values

When I read Kay Grace’s The Ultimate Board Member’s Book, I was reminded of some very gratifying as well as excruciating moments in my service as a nonprofit board member herunterladen. An example of the less than stellar was, you guessed it, board fundraising. I happened to be on the receiving end of the ask as a board member and was excited to make my commitment herunterladen. I knew it would make for easier solicitations in the community if I could demonstrate that my personal gift had already been pledged.

I remember the executive director asked me for a stretch gift (stretch for me anyway) fotobox bilder herunterladen. The ask was by phone and felt, well, phony. Without the board chair present and without looking into the eyes of the asker to whom my hard-earned dollars would be going, I felt deflated and unappreciated herunterladen. As soon as I said “yes,” the phone call was quickly ended and she checked me off the list. Or so it seemed. In the defense of this executive director, I’m sure she would have been horrified to know her ask left me feeling that way herunterladen. Fortunately, for other CEOs and executive directors, Grace’s book addresses a useful process for going about development, fundraising and stewardship of the board and community netflix offline movies. I say these three words because Grace has a specific reason for separating each function. I’ve excerpted my interview with Kay below which elaborates on the topic–

CausePlanet: Your section on philanthropy, development and fundraising is excellent, and I like how you break down each component so that everyone has a role to play fonts.

Kay Sprinkel Grace: In my longer work, Beyond Fundraising, I go into detail on this and am happy to do it here herunterladen.

Imagine three (3) concentric “eggs” or ovals. The largest, which surrounds the two smaller ovals, is philanthropy. Philanthropy is all voluntary action for the public good (Payton, 1989) and includes giving, asking, joining and serving (and for board members, it is NOT multiple choice!) prospekt herunterladen. We know through research and experience that all philanthropy is based in values: people and institutions do not give to, ask for, join or serve organizations whose values they don’t share wie kann ich google chrome herunterladen. So, it is critical to create a “culture of philanthropy” in an organization based on the values of the organization.

The second oval is development, which is the process by which we get to know people and institutions and uncover the values we share with them. Development, or relationship building, is the most important role for a board member. It requires using the anatomical ratio of two ears: one mouth–listening more than we speak. If all board members were committed to developing relationships, fundraising would not be a challenge.

The smallest of the ovals is fundraising, which I define as “giving people opportunities to act on their values.” When we know what values donors share with us (and we with them), our conversation around the ask is made easy: “You and I both care deeply about continuing independent living for seniors as long as possible to ensure their sense of dignity. We have been successful at keeping our seniors at home because of the investment of people like you. As we look to the aging of America and the growing number of seniors in our community, we see the need for our services increasing. This year, will you consider increasing your investment in these programs that we both care so deeply about?”

See also:

The Ultimate Board Member’s Book

Beyond Fundraising

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Bridge the gap between your service and advocacy

This post is the third in a series on advocacy and offers relevant Page to Practice™ book summaries and articles at the end of the first article and second article elster steuererklärung 2018 download kostenlos.

In our monthly virtual book club last week, we had coauthor of Forces for Good: The Six Practices of High-Impact Nonprofits, Heather Grant, participate mozilla firefox neueste version kostenlos deutsch. One of our attendees said, “Nothing beats actually hearing the author explain his/her insights on a subject.” I agree.

Start at the beginning windows 365 downloaden. One of the six best practices we spent some time discussing with Grant was first on the list of high-impact nonprofits: bridging the gap between service and advocacy. Several EDs in the group commiserated with one another about how this was a neglected area which needed improvement.

Systemic change requires more. In Forces for Good, Crutchfield and Grant explain that great nonprofits realize that, in order to achieve higher levels of impact, they need to bridge the gap between advocacy and service. They may start out providing great programs, but eventually realize that they cannot make systemic change without also engaging in advocacy. Others start out doing advocacy and then add programs to catalyze their strategy.

Bridge the divide. Providing services helps meet immediate needs, such as feeding the hungry or housing the poor; advocacy helps reform larger systems by changing public behavior or creating governmental solutions. High-impact nonprofits bridge the divide between advocacy and service. Although policy advocacy can be an incredibly powerful tool for creating large-scale social change, many nonprofits shy away from it.

Create a virtuous cycle. Some of the reasons for their hesitation include the fact that advocacy is difficult to manage and requires different organizational skills than those needed to provide direct services. In addition, it is challenging to measure results of advocacy efforts. However, the authors discovered that simultaneously doing both creates a virtuous cycle. Instead of causing the organization to lose focus or lessening its impact, engaging in both service and advocacy can create an impact that is greater than the sum of its parts. It is no surprise, then, that all the organizations in the book have engaged in both.

Here are three ways to bridge the divide:

1. Start with service, add advocacy. The majority of organizations in the book began with direct service, or programs, and adopted policy advocacy well after they were founded. The underlying reason why they decided to engage in advocacy was the same: They wanted to have more impact on the problems they were trying to solve.

2. Start with advocacy, add service or programs. Starting out with policy advocacy is especially effective when an organization is relatively small in relation to the level of impact it seeks to achieve.

3. Combine service and advocacy from the outset. The authors observed two main patterns among the organizations that combined both from the beginning: a) Leaders knew that replicating programs site by site, with private funding, would never take them to the level of change they were seeking; and b) Leaders also shared a common philosophical belief that government should be a part of the solution. Policy reform sends a signal to the rest of the nation that the changes these organizations propose are important enough for society as a whole to adopt.

Watch for part four of our advocacy series when we highlight how high impact nonprofits are successfully combining approaches of service and advocacy.

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Prepare to be browsed

I laughed out loud when I read this passage: “Here’s the unvarnished truth: people do not want to read your stuff download the sims for free for handy. Sure, they want to understand your stuff and absorb your stuff. But spend long stretches of time reading it? Not particularly. In our bustling world, if I understand your vision in 15 rather than 30 minutes, that’s a good thing treiber aus windows update herunterladen. If I understand your vision in five minutes rather than 15, that’s even better. And if you could slip me a pill and I’d understand your vision instantly, that would be the best.”

Finally, someone had the courage to say it gta 5 kostenlos downloaden. Tom Ahern, the author of Seeing Through A Donor’s Eyes, is responsible for this passage and is currently featured at CausePlanet alle videos herunterladen. This book is a must read for anyone who raises money, works with someone who raises money or manages someone who raises money. Ahern is a three-time winner of the prestigious International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) Gold Quill awards, given each year to the best communications work worldwide wind music notes for free. Beloved international trainer and highly successful consultant, his firm specializes in capital campaign statements, nonprofit communications audits, direct mail and donor newsletters windows 7 service pack 1 32 bit free.

So how do you get your direct mail, newsletters and proposals read? Having a good “browser level” delivers the pill form of your case, says Ahern german league of legends for free. “A well-written browsing level explains your message as quickly as humanly possible with deep penetrating power,” he adds. Studies show the human eye gravitates toward graphically distinctive elements before anything else—bigger type, bolder type and pictures instagram private videos herunterladen. In other words, focus on headlines, subheads, captions, pull quotes, bullet lists, sidebars, photos, charts and other art. Your section headlines should become your story’s structure herunterladen.

If you engage in any form of fundraising for your organization, you must read this book. According to the author, if you can persuasively answer and close on this essential question, “Why should I give you my money now,” you probably don’t need this book free videos for whatsapp. But if you’re like most of us and you find yourself fumbling for answers, this book will definitely help you. If you haven’t written a general case for support recently, the author argues you really don’t know why you’re raising money. Writing a case forces you to think about your organization’s promise, your organization’s proof and how the donor fits into your world.

Mark your calendar for Friday, March 16 at 10:30 a.m. CST when we’ll interview Tom Ahern about other brave and true claims about nonprofit communications. Watch for registration details in our regular Content Highlights newsletter. Not registered for our newsletter? Visit the left panel of any page on our site and click on the blue button, “Put us in your inbox.”

See also:

Seeing Through A Donor’s Eyes
How to Write Fundraising Materials That Raise More Money
www.aherncomm.com
to visit Tom Ahern’s site
www.emersonandchurch.com to purchase the book

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Why successful ideas are sticky

Why do some ideas seem to circulate effortlessly while others are forgotten as soon as they are created sub-lease for? How can your organization improve its chances of creating an idea that will “stick?”

Authors Chip Heath and Dan Heath offer readers a simple formula for creating successful ideas: a Simple Unexpected Concrete Credentialed Emotional Story (SUCCESs) fifa to download. The authors argue that creating sticky ideas is something that can be learned, regardless of how “naturally creative” you are.

By using the six traits of sticky ideas outlined in this book, Made to Stick, almost any idea can be made stickier—and a sticky idea is one that is more likely to make a difference github file.

Here are three ways you can make an idea sticky:

Simplicity: Being simple means more than saying something short. Instead, the goal is to create something both simple and profound, similar to a proverb. Simplicity means finding the essential core of your idea; it means excluding all other information and relentlessly prioritizing.

Unexpectedness: Using surprise is one way to get people to pay attention to your idea, but surprise doesn’t last. In order for your idea to last in the long run, you must create both interest and curiosity. And you engage people’s curiosity over the long haul by “opening gaps” in their knowledge—and then filling those gaps.

Concreteness: Sticky ideas are full of concrete images. Making your ideas concrete means explaining them in terms of human actions or through sensory information. Mission statements are usually so ambiguous that they are meaningless. Using concrete language ensures that your idea will mean the same thing to everyone in your audience.

Read the rest of the six traits and more about Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by subscribing to Page to Practice™ book summaries. Or, purchase this summary by visiting the CausePlanet summary store. Learn more about the Heath brothers and their books at www.heathbrothers.com.

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