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White Women Friends & Colleagues: Join me on LinkedIn Live for an “Unlearning Series”
Join me on LinkedIn Live on March 20th @ 1:30PM EST to kick off a community reading of “White Women: Everything You Already Know About Your Own Racism and How to Do Better.” Check out the LinkedIn Event for details.
https://www.linkedin.com/video/event/urn:li:ugcPost:7042506532789387264/
Relationships as Wealth and Lunar New Year
The Lunar New Year is one of the few holidays I really dig in to, albeit in my own western-white-Buddhist cultural flavor. I missed it this year due to illness (the whole house had COVID, despite our maxxed vaxxed status) and loss and illness of loved ones. I...
Workshop: The Journey of Becoming
Interested in making decisions and goal-setting easier in 2023? It's easier (note I didn't say easy) when you start with your vision, with "who" you and "why" you are. Answering that question is the bedrock for creating the processes and goals that feel authentic,...
Move over #GivingTuesday, it’s now #WTFWednesday!
When I think about this time of year, one of things that activates my clients in fundraising is Giving Tuesday. What should I be doing for Giving Tuesday? And oh my gosh, the end of the year people are gonna wanna give at the end of the year, I should have a...
If your fundraising practice was a garden. . . .
“And don’t think the garden loses its ecstasy in winter. It’s quiet, but the roots are down there riotous.” ~ Rumi
I’ll be at the Race Equity Conference in Detroit Oct 13-14, will I see you there?
I'm getting excited to attend the Just Lead; Race Equity Conference by New Detroit. Amazing speakers, an interesting hybrid on-line / in-person format, a wonderful list of attendees that includes my lovely friends, mentors & colleagues Dr. Diana Wong and Wayne...
It’s a good day when I get a loving recommendation from someone I admire deeply. . .
Yodit Mesfin-Johnson from Nonprofit Enterprise at Work talks about her work with Patricia Berry from Patricia Berry Consulting.
Creating a Fundraising Manifesto!
Nonprofit Enterprise at Work here in Ann Arbor, MI is taking aim at evolving the field of philanthropy. Read their Fundraising Manifesto and get inspired for what is possible when values drive your fundraising!
Liberation Philanthropy | A Conversation With Nonprofit Enterprise at Work (NEW)
I was honored to join Nonprofit Enterprise at Work (NEW) and their Leading & Learning community to talk about approaching fundraising, the exchange of wealth, with deep reflection on how power imbalances affect your practice. If you ask yourself; “who in my organization is denied the power of “NO”? does it illuminate a power imbalance in your work?
A lot of things had to happen for me to become me. . . .
This is a sad story. . . told in three words, welcome home from the North Patricia “You’ve Got Mail”
What if we took the “emergency” out of fundraising?
When #MentalHealthAwarenessMonth came around, my marketing self put a to-do list in my brain. I should be doing something! I should be writing something! I should have a deadline associated with this! The longer I sat in my garden thinking about this “to-do”ingness,...
Come join us for a Conversation Incubator. Apply by April 1, 2022.
Deadline April 1, 2022 to apply! Come join me and Sharonda Simmons from Thrive & Shine Consulting for a lively, interactive and vision driven conversation on what it means to make DEI and Fundraising practice an integral part of your ecosystem. These...
Strategic Planning with A Graphic Twist!
Facilitated meetings, juicy visions , empowering and clear strategies. Oh My!
Brite Ideas: Lean, Multi-purpose approaches to stewardship
This is a wonderful example of a lean, nimble organization doing thoughtful work with their annual report. This video is engaging, mission authentic and can be used in multiple ways to tell the story of their work to not only donors, but in a myriad of other ways....
Skullmeat Delight: James Clear’s Atomic Habits
I’m going to be honest and say I am still crawling out of the 2020 pandemic lock-down haze. It’s been slow going to get me back to my joyful and engaged self. While I am usually not a big fan of self-help books because of their inclination towards productivity porn...
I’m a College Professor, so Why Should I Care About Fundraising?
Skullmeat Delight: Brené Brown’s Lessons for Fearless Fundraising
Has this ever happened to you? You make a financial ask from a donor, they say yes, perhaps quickly and then. . . . silence. You maybe make a follow-up call or two. . . . silence. If you are like me, it is at that point that I start making up a story, usually with...
Why Do I Need to Do Benchmarking?
Knowing How to Ask for the Right Amount of Money
How should I incentivize my fundraising team?
What I have been watching, writing and reading
On my table this month is the juicy work of Cyndi Suarez, The Power Manual; How to Master Complex Power Dynamics. Suarez is (among a million other impressive things) President & Editor-in-Chief at Nonprofit Quarterly. Her deep discussion of the social, political,...
What Does a Successful Fundraiser Look Like?
Compassionate Fundraisers Ask for Permission to Talk About Money
What’s the Deal with Annual Funds?
Can I Take Contacts and Donors From One Job to the Next?
Are Events the Best Way to Raise Money?
Why Leadership from the Top Matters
How important are acknowledgment letters?
What does Donor-Centric Mean?
What’s a fundraising consultant?
The Relationship Circle
When you are doing the work of relationship-focused fundraising, asking a donor for money becomes easier, regardless of the answer. It’s just one of many conversations and touch-points you will share with a dedicated partner. Creating a 12-18 month plan for...
Asking for Money: Getting Over the Weirdness
One of the first things I unpack with a new client is how they approach the idea of asking people for money. Often, we end up talking about fear, discomfort, and honestly, shame in being in a position of “begging”. When you are practicing relationship-focused...
Relationship Journey
Traditional wisdom in fundraising says that transformational, recurring donors only arrive once in a life-time for a nonprofit, and are the result of high-paid, individual work by your star major giving officer. The secret is, anyone in any organization can grow...
Creating a 100-Year Friend: Observe & Interact
Observing your fundraising program, and focusing your donor strategy on your own culture and unique set of circumstances, will pay off in good choices and meaningful practice tailored to the philanthropic mission you serve. Observe & Interact is a principle of...
The 100-Year Friend: An Eco-System Approach to Fundraising
This is the first series of blog posts titled “The 100-Year Friend”. They explore the world of philanthropy through the lens of Permaculture thinking and the metaphor of the garden ecosystem. It is the culmination of my 25 years of experience in the field of big-box...
Transforming Fundraising toward Social Justice
There is a Mary Oliver poem that is so present for me right now. It’s titled “The Uses of Sorrow” - Someone I loved once gave me/ a box full of darkness/ It took me years to understand/ that this, too, was a gift In this 2020 box of darkness of loss, pandemic,...
Lessons in Abundance from my Oma Frieda
My maternal grandmother was named Frieda. I just found out from Wikipedia, that saucy mistress of procrastination, that the name means “peaceful ruler” and I have to say that is spot on. She was a wonderful mix of autocratic and kind and the reason I do what I do in...
Fundraising in the age of pandemic
Can we open a hard conversation about fundraising in this unprecedented time? I’m having some terrible, and brave and wonderful and hard conversations right now with colleagues in organizations who are facing unimaginable choices on all fronts of their work. I’m hoping this post can open up some of that conversation to our community to ask ourselves some difficult questions with compassion and as little judgment as possible.
Meeting My Mentor in SoulCollage
In late 2018 I embarked on my year of Radical Yes. I turned 50 years old and for the first time realized a life-long dream of building a fundraising consulting business. Up to this point, in so many ways, I was buying into all the things society was telling me: I was...