Tag: leadership

Leaders and Letters

Steven Screen  |  Repeat

Quick note for all my friends out there in small nonprofits:

The Leader of a larger nonprofit is not usually involved in creating the letters and emails that go out with their signature.

Let that sink in for a bit.  An e-appeal can be brainstormed, written, designed and sent without the Leader even seeing it.

Is that because the leader doesn’t care?  Nope, they care deeply about how the fundraising is doing.

Is that because the Leader is so busy?  Nope, if the Leader’s help was necessary for the fundraising to go well, the Leader would make the time.

The Leader doesn’t see the fundraising before it goes out because the Leader has delegated that task to experts.

Then the leader lets those experts do their jobs.

The Leader knows that a staff member (or agency like Better Fundraising) who is focused on the art and science of direct response fundraising is going to create letters and emails that raises more money than the Leader himself or herself would write.

It makes all kinds of sense that when a nonprofit is just getting going, the leader is deeply involved in the fundraising messaging.  The Leader is also probably handling the data entry, the accounting, and negotiating the lease the first time the organization rents an office.

Then, just as a Leader hands all of those functions off to subject matter experts, they hand off fundraising message creation to experts in fundraising messaging.

Should there be check-ins on content and results?  Of course.  Can the Leader express their will and preferences?  Of course.

But hand it off to the experts.  Trust their expertise.  Hold them accountable by reviewing results.  Let them do their jobs.

You don’t become a big nonprofit and then hand your fundraising off to experts.  You hand your fundraising to experts so that you become a big nonprofit.

Female Founders on Fire

Steven Screen  |  Tips
Tips

This is a brief ode to Female Founders on Fire.

We love serving them because they are a joy to work for, and such a force for good in the world. 

And all of us Fundraisers have things to learn from them. So with great thanks and admiration, here are Five Reasons that Female Founders on Fire make such effective Fundraisers:

  1. They are courageous.  Like everyone else, they feel fear when asking for support. But their courage allows them to push through the fear and bravely ask for support.
  2. Selective pride.  They are justifiably proud of what they’ve built, but are always on the lookout for better ways of doing things.
  3. They give the credit away.  They express profound gratitude to donors because the founder remembers what she was able to accomplish when she was an “army of one”… and she knows how much more the organization accomplishes today thanks to the generosity of donors. 
  4. They boldly share why help is needed today.  In my experience, Female Founders on Fire almost always have first-hand experience with their cause.  They know what the suffering is/was like, and they know that hearing about that suffering moves people to action.  After all, it was the founder’s own suffering, or the suffering of someone close to her, that caused her to take the action of starting the organization.
  5. They humanize beneficiaries.  They create organizations and fundraising materials that show beneficiaries as more than just the problem they had or negative situation they were in. 

To finish, I want to say something about those Female Founders on Fire who have first-hand experience with their cause.

The fact that they’ve transformed their own suffering into an organization that does good – and their willingness to relive their own suffering for the good of others – is a GIFT to the world that I don’t have the words to describe. It’s so full of good it just sort of… knocks me sideways.

If you know one of these founders, figure out how to say “thank you” to them.  Soon.

And if you are one of these founders, thank you from the bottom of our hearts.