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Whether you’re looking to finish strong on an already successful year, or you’re looking to close a gap to goal, this story of a high school wrestling tournament offers four ways to help any team reach their goal in the face of adversity.

First, let me set the stage…

As our clients seek to finish the year strong, we are helping them navigate the changing landscape of grant writing with its new challenges and opportunities. Staying ahead of the curve is crucial for anyone looking to secure funding in a competitive environment. Here’s a look at the latest trends that we are seeing in grant writing. Consider using these strategies to refine your approach and increase your chances of success.

As a nonprofit organization, your case for support is a critical tool to communicate the value and impact of your work, build relationships with donors, and secure the resources needed to fulfill your mission. But it’s not enough to write it once and assume it’s always going to work.

While you should dust off and evaluate the strength and validity of your case every year, sometimes you need a bigger reset.

I get asked this question at least once a week: what’s the single most important thing for successful campaigns? Most who ask this question suspect my answer will be something about wealth screening, stewardship, powerful cases, endorsements from community leaders, etc.

The simple answer is … leadership. And that leadership has to come from all levels of the organization.

Leadership takes the form of a graphic designer who spends the extra hours to make materials simple, elegant and powerful.

As a consulting firm focused on fund development, we field calls daily from organizations seeking advice and counsel on how to raise money for lots of reasons: annual sustaining, endowment, disaster relief, education and awareness, and of course capital campaigns.

A note from the author – remember, your results may vary.

This month, the Donor By Design Group is challenging you to take action, moving from resolutions to results. Today’s topic? Creating and keeping momentum in your campaign.  

In this series, the DBD Team will take a deeper look at some of the axioms we use when working with our clients. In today’s blog, Thom Peters reflects on our axiom: “Don’t settle.”

Our board just isn’t a fundraising board.

We hear that feedback from nonprofit leaders – both staff and volunteer – nearly every day. Whether it’s said with regret or with frustration, nonprofits, schools and churches are clearly puzzled as to why their board seems disengaged or focused on less-important minutiae.

One of the more interesting trends we’ve noticed in capital campaigns is a shift in leadership structure. Instead of individual chairs, we’re commonly seeing co-chairs, tri-chairs, honorary chairs and more. While this may seem like a suspect idea at first – if everyone is in charge, no one is in charge – it turns out to work really well in this critical volunteer capacity.