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Boredom, downtime, thinking time… Sounds like a luxury, doesn’t it? With a plethora of smart phones, laptops and other technology gadgets, there really is never a moment when you aren’t doing something. Whether on the subway, on a plane or waiting for a doctor appointment, there’s no reason to be bored – unless you really want to be successful, that is.

At Donor By Design, one of our core beliefs is to always to tell the kind truth. We serve our clients best when we’re honest with each other about what’s working and what’s not. The importance of an outside perspective was vividly illustrated for me on a recent drive.

Endowment, stewardship, and relationship development are fundraising tasks all too often placed on the dreaded back burner. We all have one: the place where the really critical tasks go to simmer and eventually dry up and die.

SENIOR CONSULTANT

J. David Schmidt brings a wealth of experience on strategic thinking, large scale innovation and organization leadership development for nonprofit organizations, foundations and more.

At Donor By Design, we are guided by a series of axioms: Core concepts that shape our work and have proven their worth over and over again. In this series, we’re digging into these axioms and clarify how they can help you achieve your development goals. Read Part 1.

At Donor By Design, we are guided by a series of axioms: Core concepts that shape our work and have proven their worth over and over again. In this new series, we’ll dig into these axioms and clarify how they can help you achieve your development goals.

In July, a mentor in my life died: Senator Alan J. Dixon. A moderate Democrat from Southern Illinois, he would remind me that I never “worked for Senator Dixon.” Rather, I “worked with Senator Dixon and for the people of Illinois.”  His opponents dubbed him “Al the Pal” in an attempt to link him with typical Illinois political cronyism.

How many times have you thought, “Boy, he is so lucky?” Truth is, luck is never really the reason; it’s the offspring. A mentor of mine, a brilliant physician, said this about luck: “Luck is when preparation meets opportunity… and I make my own luck by always preparing.”

I recently visited with the staff of a local nonprofit organization.
We were reviewing their 2014 campaign and discussing strategies for 2015. As usual, we talked about renewals and new prospects. We also talked about where executives’ and board members’ time is best spent. How do we cultivate our closer friends now to have the right to ask for an annual major gift in a few months? This question is critical to enhancing the major gifts portion of any annual campaign, and will also be a cultivation step for future capital giving for these annual donors.
But one executive put it perfectly when identifying what’s good use of her time right now. Simply put, she said “don’t water the rocks!”
What does it mean to “not water the rocks”?

A few weeks ago, I attended a meeting of non-profit leaders struggling through a slump in their capital campaign.