Some mornings, my husband reads something to me from the newspaper and then proceeds to tell me what he thinks.  If I try to interject my

thoughts, he says, "let me finish."  I've learned that this means he wants to lecture, pontificate, rant rather than have a conversation.  So I umm and nod my head.  Sometimes I even listen.  But I am disconnected.  My mind is elsewhere, my thoughts on something different.

 

Your donors are the same.  When you spend your time with them talking at them, telling them what you want them to hear, they are not involved, not engaged.  If you are lucky they are thinking, "Ummm, that's interesting, I want to know more.  I hope I get a chance to ask questions."  But frequently they will have turned off before they know if they have an interest at all.

Cultivation is a lot of things-it is opening doors to your organization and inviting the prospect in.  It is asking them for their help and connecting them more closely to your organization.  It is showing them the impact of the work you do.  But above all, it is building a relationship between your prospect and the organization with you as the connecting link.

Because it is a relationship, it's best if there is a peer who is at the forefront of the process.  I think that most of the prospects and donors I worked with in my years of front-line fundraising liked me, but truth be told, I was unimportant.  When I left that organization, I generally left that relationship behind, also.  If I had done my job well, that donor had other connections within the organization to keep that relationship solid. (READ MORE)

  

 

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While I am a big believer in planning, sometimes it is not what you should be doing. I recently had a client, for example, who every time we got to the point of implementing the development plan we had created, decided that she needed to see the plan in a slightly different format. Planning as a form of avoidance. And certainly, if your organization is in crisis, you can't afford the luxury of the long view.  In these cases, you need to get somewhere fast-and to do that you need to map out the most direct line from where you are to where you need to get.  And then you must immediately get on the road.

At one of my workshops, one of the participants introduced himself as the 6 months new development director of an organization that was in financial crisis. "We don't," he said, "have enough funds to meet payroll this month. So I am here to learn how to raise the necessary money to keep our doors open." 

Flattered as I was that he thought I could give him the magic bullet in the next three hours, I was concerned enough to corner him at the end of the workshop.

"What," I asked him, "have you been doing in the six months since you were hired?"  (READ MORE)