When the question of major gift fundraising first arises, many unsophisticated board members, volunteers and staff immediately begin talking about the “rich and famous” — with Bill Gates being the name at the top of almost everyone’s list. The wrong assumption that many people make — and one that can become a major time waster …

Why It’s Important to Work On Ourselves, as Consultants The world as we experience it is the product of perception not the cause of it. As people we are not passive receptors of stimuli coming from an external world, but in a very concrete sense we create much of our reality. This is why it …

I recently encountered an organization that’s on the cusp of a big change … a change about which its huge constituency is feeling a bit uncertain. The agency has never had a chief executive, and that’s part of the new picture that has some supporters skeptical. After all, things have gone okay without one, why …

Whenever we plan, there are unlimited opportunities for us to make assumptions (consciously or otherwise). Highly successful project managers (that rare breed?) recognise this acutely and most importantly, the potential impact that even the simplest looking assumption can have on a project. Recognising and capturing assumptions, thereby enabling us to test selected assumptions, can be …

Nike makes shoes, right? Well, not exactly. Nike is a wonderful company with superb marketing capability. But Nike outsources the actual manufacturing process to someone else. So in that sense, Nike does not make shoes. Nike’s competitive work is the design and marketing of athletic shoes. Obviously, the company has succeeded for years at doing …

A common theme that emerges with many of my coaching clients is that they would like more feedback. They would like to know if they are doing a good job and are on track with what is expected of them. Further, if they are not meeting the expectations, they would like to know what they …

Caterpillars spin cocoons. Spiders spin webs. Young kids sometimes spin to make themselves dizzy. Whirling dervishes definitely spin toward a higher power, and fitness clubs are fond of offering spin classes. But is PR spin? Most of the public relations professionals that I know consider “spin” to be a pejorative term in their profession. It …

People are always asking us for examples of business plans, which is a bit ironic, in that every credible plan I’ve ever seen has “Confidential” stamped all over it. That said, there are samples out there, which is fine as long as you don’t assume you should do it the way they did it. Here …

Typically no single source provides all of the information necessary for writing a good marketing plan for your business. This means gathering information from several sources. You may need to gather information on demographics, industry trends and competition, to name just a few.

Many Non-Profit Organizations (NPOs) use the term “Major Gifts” to refer to those that are larger than the usual range of gifts that arrive in the mail. Typically, $1,000 is the magic number. But, unless an organization’s budget and/or the amount to be raised via the fundraising process is unusually small, gifts of $1,000 won’t …