Blog

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.

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.

Conversations around giving can feel tricky for anyone, but I find that the people who struggle with it most are church leaders. Many pastors and lay staff are reluctant to talk about money at all. Those that do tend to focus on immediate operational needs of the church or mission-based outreach.

Many nonprofit leaders want to begin an endowment development program, but are unsure of where to start. They don’t know who might be a good prospect in their community or among their past donors. How can you tell if someone has the resources and the desire to leave a legacy gift to your organization?

Upon learning about an amazing $40,000,000 estate gift made to the Westport Weston Family YMCA in Connecticut, another non-profit leader commented to me on how lucky they were to receive such a transformational donation. Having had the honor of working with the staff and volunteers of the Westport Weston Family Y for the past few years on their capital campaign, I quickly assured him that “luck” had nothing to do with it!

Recently, we were asked to share a presentation on endowment for NAYDO – the North American YMCA Development Organization. We published this blog on their site as a companion to that presentation, and are sharing it here with our readers. Even if you’re not a YMCA, we think you might benefit from dispelling a few of these myths in your nonprofit, school or church.

Recently I had lunch with a church pastor. His church has an endowment fund from the sale of property, but it hasn’t grown much since then. Like many congregations, his church could benefit from the income a stronger endowment could provide.

It’s nearing the end of the year and something is unfinished on your to-do list. It’s something you’ve been thinking about all year, perhaps even for the past several years, and yet you haven’t quite gotten to it.

Christine Ann Domestic Abuse Services Inc. (Oshkosh, WI) provides a variety of services to help the victims of domestic violence and to prevent violence before it starts. As the demand for their shelter services grew, they knew they needed to expand and remodel the 1908 Victorian mansion that is a home and haven to those who seek shelter there.

I was hesitant to start reading Michael Oren’s book, Power, Faith and Fantasy: American in the Middle East from 1776 to the Present, thinking that it may be years before I finished. It’s more than 600 pages long!