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Years ago, I attended one of my first YMCA training events, held at the Calhoun Beach Hotel in Minneapolis. The day’s featured presentation on board development was of very little interest to me.

When it comes to Annual Campaigns, the success of your campaign is directly affected by the success of your volunteer leaders. And you, as a nonprofit executive, can have a great impact on their success.

Recently, someone I know received an annual campaign appeal from an organization that he has had a long and deep relationship with. His family has made major gifts to the organization, and they’ve made the organization a planned giving beneficiary. In this particular appeal, he and his wife were misidentified with an incorrect first name and salutation. At the same time, three other letters, with different names but listing his address, also appeared at his door.

It was soooooo frustrating: the camp auction. All I wanted was a gift certificate to my favorite bakery. As we bid higher, a friend outbid us. Again and again. Man I wanted the ginger cookies from this bakery or a loaf of challah bread. But here was a friend of mine bidding them out of sight! Forget it. Let him have it.

Like most professionals in today’s work environment, I have looked for a variety of mentors to help me grow and develop as a professional, as a woman in the workplace, and as a wife and mother. 

Great communicators treat storytelling as an art. They know it’s among the most effective ways to make a point, set a tone and connect with an audience of any size. Stories bring organizational mission to life, give a face to a case and leave long-lasting impressions. As fundraisers, we are eager to tell stories, and if done well, we have the opportunity to entertain, educate and inspire. We often enter rooms prepared to network, armed with our best stuff, ready to impress! What could possibly go wrong?

Nearly every big ask in my career as a staffer and consultant – whether it be an ask for a lead gift or a key leadership position – started with a no.

Many thanks for the good wishes. My situation has deteriorated dramatically, and I’m currently in home hospice. For now all is stable. But the long-term prospects are clear and not good. And long-term for me is actually very short-term.

“The smartest people know what they don’t know.”

I had that drilled into me some three decades ago by a mentor. He practiced this every day, listening carefully to others’ views, thoughts and opinions. He surrounded himself with people who “are smarter than me…at least in one area.”

Many of the nonprofits we work with find themselves in a unique and delicate situation: they are changing or replacing a beloved historic building to make way for a new facility. While their reasons are sound – greater accessibility, lower maintenance costs, more efficient operating costs – it can be difficult to balance respect of the past with the needs of the future.