Werth-It Fundraising Blog

Let’s say I were to say to you, “Your hand is green.” What would you do?

I imagine you would mildly say, “No, it isn’t.” Or you might inquire why I think your hand is green. You might brush it off as an odd statement.

However, if I said your hand is green, you wouldn’t get angry with me about it. You wouldn’t spend 20 minutes denying it. You wouldn’t demand an apology. It wouldn’t be worth your time. It wouldn’t be true and that would be it.

I’m reminded of that whenever I come across someone who is angry. Some of them are really filled with denial. Something happened and they’re outraged and they deny the whole thing. When they’re yelling, I think to myself, “They wouldn’t be so filled with rage if it wasn’t true.” You’re not that angry if someone says your hand is green because it clearly isn’t green.

So I look at some of the politicians on the national stage who are filled with anger at something someone said. I think, “All that anger means there’s some truth in it.”

The next time you see someone filled with anger, rage and denial, think about whether there’s some truth to it.

Normally I blog about fundraising and board development. If you have questions about fundraising or about having your board of directors learn about fundraising, please write me, Katherine Wertheim, CFRE, at katherine@werth-it.com.

There was a song by The Carpenters in the 1970′s where they sang, “Close to You.” (It goes, “Why do birds/suddenly appear, every time/you are near? Just like me/they long to be/close to you.”) I was thinking of that today, humming it in my head, while I was thinking about the likeliness of any particular donor giving a gift. The closer they are to me, physically and  emotionally, the more likely they are to give a gift.

Let’s take physically first. The least likely way for someone to donate is in response to an ad in a magazine. I’m not close to them, I don’t even know their name. Next, in order, they’re more likely to give if I write them a letter and address them by name. I’m closer. I’m yet closer if I call. Still closer is if they’re at a large event, then a smaller, more intimate event. They are most likely to donate, however, if I’m right next to them, perhaps having tea with them.

Emotionally, they’re less likely to donate if they don’t know me and I don’t know them. The likelihood of their donating increases as we both know each other. They’re most likely to donate if they feel that we know each other well and have built up trust.

As the song says, “They long to be/close to you.” And if you know that song, I’ll bet you’re humming it in your head right now.

If you have questions about fundraising or about teaching your board of directors to fundraise, please contact me, Katherine Wertheim, CFRE, at katherine@werth-it.com.

A lot of organizations are really struggling to raise money right now. If that’s you, here’s what I would do:

First, sit down with your donor list, prioritized by the amount that your donors have given in the last three years. Your #1 donor should be at the top, followed by the person who gave you the second largest amount, and so on. Take a highlighter pen and look for individuals, specifically, as they can make quick decisions on whether to give. Ignore whether they just gave you a gift. Highlight those you haven’t met with in the last year.

Next, clear out nine days in your schedule in the next month. If fundraising is really an emergency, for example if you can’t meet payroll, then clear out your entire schedule right now. Eliminate anything that isn’t fundraising. In fact, even eliminate anything that is fundraising but won’t come through soon. If you need to meet payroll and you have a choice between writing a grant or meeting a donor, meet the donor. An individual donor can make a decision now, while a grant may not come through for six months or longer and may not be approved at all.

In clearing out your schedule, you should leave three days a week for three weeks in a row, beginning in about a week (again, sooner if you have to meet payroll). You should make yourself available anytime between eight in the morning and six at night.

Then, either you get on the phone and schedule appointments with your donors, or hire a professional appointment setter to do it. It’s better to hire someone to make appointments, as they’ll get more appointments for you than you will for yourself, and you should be spending your time going on appointments, not setting them up. Keep on this person, as you have to have these appointments.

Then, while the appointments are getting set up, learn what you need to do to meet with donors. I recommend either the book Asking by Jerrold Panas, or the 30-minute video “Speaking of Money” by Kay Sprinkel Grace. You can get the video at www.boardsource.org.

If you can, get a board member to accompany you to these appointments, but if you can’t, a staff member who can discuss programs is also helpful. Or just go on the appointments yourself. Be sure to listen to the donor, talk about what you will do with their donation, and ask for a specific amount of money. Most of the people who agree to an appointment will also make a donation. They already believe in your work, but they will give much more if they meet you in person.

In addition to these major donor meetings, arrange for small group meetings, preferably in someone’s home. Ask current donors to invite their friends. Anyone who’s used to hosting in their home can put this together in ten days or less. Politicians do these kinds of events all the time. Develop a short program of 20-30 minutes, and the entire gathering can take less than an hour. Talk about what you do, why it’s important, and what specific dollar amounts can do, whether it’s the amount that one person can give or what the entire room of people can do together.

Finally, spend your remaining time drafting other people to help you. Have them set up meetings with people and groups they know. Can they arrange a meeting with their church or religious congregation? Can they ask for a church offering? Can they set up a meeting with the board of their local Rotary club and ask for a donation? Can they accompany you to a meeting? Will they invite their friends to listen to your request in their homes? If they don’t have a home for hosting, will they set up a happy-hour in a local bar so you can ask their friends for money?

If you need money, those are the three things that will get you the fastest results: ask your current high-dollar donors for support, put together small gatherings to ask for money, and organize other people to do the same.

If you need more details, my ebook, Fast Fundraising is available at https://fundraising.myshopify.com. If you have questions about fundraising, please write me, Katherine Wertheim, CFRE, at katherine@werth-it.com.

Today I’m going to write about using the Benevon system of fundraising. If you’re not familiar with it, I suggest you first go to their website at www.benevon.com and view their 17-minute video about their system.

I really like the Benevon system of fundraising. It’s got a lot of strong points. There are some concerns, which I will discuss here, but I want to emphasize that, if you’re considering using their model, they do get tremendous results.

Terry Axelrod is the founder of Benevon, which was originally named “Raising More Money.” The Benevon system that she developed solves a number of problems in fundraising. These include:

* Holding events that are entertaining but don’t inform attendees about the organization, and which cost too much money and don’t raise enough.

* Treating each year of fundraising separately; opening each year with no funds and having to start fundraising over.

* Not being able to articulate what you will do with the money you raise.

* Not having systems for meeting new donors and getting higher levels of commitment from the donors you have.

I think the Benevon system is brilliant. I’ve used it to get these results:

*150 people at a luncheon donate $156,000 in cash and pledges.

* 25 people at a luncheon donate more than $80,000.

* An organization builds from 90 people at a luncheon to more than 400 in about four and half years.

Those are tremendous results. Two of these organizations had never before held a special event that raised this kind of money.

So I highly recommend Benevon.

What are Benevon’s flaws? First, it’s expensive. To attend their seminar, it will cost an organization $15,000, plus travel, hotel and meal expenses, for a team of six to seven people. Second, they won’t let individuals take the training: you must go in as a team, and for many nonprofits, it’s hard to pull together a team of volunteers as well as staff. Third, they only provide limited coaching with their seminars; it’s four hours over the course of a year.

However, they do provide the books you need to learn the system on your own, and they know that many people do that. For about $350, you can get their six books and three videos. These are well worth the money. They also answer a lot of questions on their website, which is extremely helpful.

Another caveat about Benevon is that you have to be careful to train multiple staff members on it. The problem with nonprofits is that they tend to pay poorly, and so people get better jobs elsewhere. If you have a staff member who gets trained in Benevon and raises $150,000 net from a one-hour event, that person is going to get hired by another organization that will pay better. You’ll be lucky if you have them for another year. So if you’re going to use it, make sure that you train multiple staff members in it, or turnover will hurt you.

A different caveat about Benevon is that you have to be careful to integreate your Table Captain volunteers into the Point of Entry event system. If you’re treating your monthly introductory events, your POE’s, as separate from your annual fundraising breakfast or lunch, you’ll find that you’re getting fewer dollars after the first event. That’s because you haven’t taken the time to introduce people to your work before you ask them to give. Benevon is careful to talk about this, but in my experience many people ignore this. The way to manage this problem, really, is to draft Table Captains well before the event, perhaps even a year before, and have them ask the friends to a POE that they would invite to the fundraising event. If you do that, you’ll overcome the problem of not educating future donors in advance of requesting money.

My final caveat would be that I wish Benevon would spend more time on coaching people through the process. I don’t find that their seminars do enough to educate people. They can’t, it’s only two days. It would be helpful to have more time available from a consultant who has been through the process and can educate you on the system, so that you can ask questions as they occur. Otherwise, the best thing you can do is to find someone who is knowledgable about Benevon and have them work for you or with you to go through at least one fundraising event.

As I said, I strongly believe in the Benevon system. I feel that my quibbles are mild. I’ve seen this system raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for organizations that have used it. If you’re fundraising for a nonprofit, I highly recommend that you at least buy their books and tapes and review them. If you can pull a team of seven to attend their workshops, that’s even better.

If you have questions about fundraising or about training your board of directors in fundraising, please contact me, Katherine Wertheim, CFRE, at katherine@werth-it.com.

It’s the end of December, when a lot of people make their year-end gifts. Many organizations are sending out their final emails, hoping to get those last-minute donations. I’ve been looking at email subject lines, seeing what people send me. After all, a subject line determines whether your email is opened or deleted. You have about five words to grab your reader’s attention. So what’s effective? Here’s a selection of email subject lines from my own email.

Happy Holidays from (Organization)

Brooke needs your help…

Give the gift of opportunity, security and hope

A Personal Appeal from (org. name)’s CEO (name)

Are you the 36%?

Wow — a great gift for (Organization)!

Help Save a Child’s Life

Support (Organization) this Holiday Season

Getting stronger in California

Reaching Beyond the Choir

Make your (Organization) year-end gift today!

One minute to read one child’s story

Donation request

A gift for both of us this holiday season

Those are just the emails I’ve received in the seven-day period of December 15 -21 which directly ask for money. They don’t include the holiday greetings, newsletters or annual reports.

For the above subject lines, I like those with a little mystery. I immediately opened, “Are you the 36%?” which refers to the 36% of their support coming from individuals.  I also liked “One minute to read one child’s story” because there’s an implied promise that it will be brief and moving. I read “A gift for both of us” because I knew the sender. I didn’t like the “message from the CEO” subject line, but it turned out to be a good appeal once I opened it and I’m considering it.

So what did I find compelling? I responded to the email that came from someone I mentored and made a gift. I sent another donation to someone I knew who was participating in a marathon. As to the rest, I’m keeping a list and will make my decisions next week, before December 31st.

Actually, it doesn’t matter if I think it’s effective or not. There are only three things that matter: how many people opened it, how many people gave, and what was the average gift. That’s it. In fundraising, opinions don’t count, donations do.

Next I’ll post an email solicitation that I found effective.

If you would like to talk to me about fundraising for your organization or teaching your board of directors to fund raise, please contact me, Katherine Wertheim, CFRE, at katherine@werth-it.com.

A lot of us have heard “Donors should be thanked seven times for their gift!” But what does that mean? And how do you thank someone seven times?

Here are some of the ways you can thank a donor. There are more than seven, but you can pick and choose.

1. Pick up the phone and call. I don’t know why more organizations don’t do this. It takes a minute, it can be done by volunteers, you can do it the day you receive a gift, and it’s free. It does take time to organize, however, and many organizations don’t feel they have the time, but really, you can give a volunteer a list from your data entry, or just copies of the gift receipts, and have them do it. It’s not that difficult. Personally, there are organizations that receive hundreds or even thousands of dollars from me and they don’t do this. I’m very impressed when they do.

2. Send an email. If someone donates online, you can make sure they get an instant email in return. Too often, these are cold and impersonal, merely saying, “Your gift of $XX was received on DATE. This is a receipt for your records. Your gift is tax deductible to the extent that the law allows.” How about adding a few sentences about what their gift will do, and thanking them in a more personal way? Pretend that you’ve just made a gift of $1,000; what would you like the receipt to say?

3. Write a letter. The IRS requires a written receipt if the gift is over $250, but how about writing something for every donor? When I was producing mailings for 131 chapters of the American Red Cross National Headquarters, we sent a $5 donor a thank-you note and an envelope, and he returned it with another check for $1,000! If that chapter had said they didn’t want than-you notes sent to small donors, they never would have gotten that second check. So I think it’s worth it (or “Werth-It” to put a pun on my company name) to send a letter for almost all gifts. If saving money is really a priority, you can design a nice postcard for small gifts and send it, but put on it that you’re trying to use their gift most effectively so you hope they understand. Otherwise, plan to spend 3% of the gift to thank the donor.

4. Send a second letter in January, summarizing all their gifts for the previous year, for their tax records. Donors will see this twice: when they receive it and again when they do their taxes. You get a double hit. Make sure to thank them again for their gifts and make sure it’s accurate.

5. Put your donor names on your website, or at least those of a certain amount. Make sure that Google can find it. Donors like to Google themselves, and they’ll be pleased to see their name on your website. (You can ask on your donation page or return coupon how they want to be listed.) In my experience, very few donors, well under 1%, want their gift to be anonymous.

6. Produce an annual report and list your donors there. You can send this to your mailing list with a letter requesting donations. People tend to keep annual reports and read them thoroughly, and if you talk about how you used their donations, they’re more likely to make another gift. A beautiful annual report can also be added as “additional materials” to any grant application and it makes foundations more likely to fund you if they can see how your work makes a difference. When you have a five-page limit on a grant application, adding another 16 pages of photos and essays about your work can influence the grant-makers to donate. Having a donor listing also makes donors feel proud to support you and more likely to upgrade their giving into the next category (so it’s important to have categories, such as $100-$249, $250 – $499, etc.).

7. Thank your donors with a party. Have one event each year where you invite donors to see your work and thank them. It can be a holiday party, a graduation, a testimonial, a reception, a rehearsal, a performance, or just a gathering or office tour. It doesn’t have to be expensive or elaborate, but if they can see some element of your work, and perhaps bring a spouse or friends, that’s helpful.

8. Thank your donors in person. In the course of a year, you should try to see about 150 of your donors for each staff person who does fundraising, including the executive director. That’s ambitious, of course, but it still just means three meetings a week of an hour or less. Surely you can free up 10% of your time for the people who gives you thousands of dollars a year? Think of it this way: if someone gives you $X amount by phone, they can give you ten times that amount if you meet with them in person.

9. Call your donors around the holidays just to thank them again and wish them a happy holiday. Even if you’re hesitant to have a volunteer call donors when they make a gift because you don’t want a volunteer to see their donation amounts, you can still have these kinds of calls done. The volunteer doesn’t have to know the specific amount they gave. They can just get a list of names and numbers and a script to say, “I’m calling from ___ organization and I just want to say thank you for your support and to wish you happy holidays from all of us.” It’s simple, it’s quick, you can leave phone messages, and it can be done by anyone, from teenagers doing community service to elderly shut-ins who would like a task they can do from home.

10. Have a donor wall where you list certain kinds of donors, like those who make a planned gift, or a bequest, or a gift over a certain amount. Display it where the most people will see it. Take a picture and email it to your donor, or have a ceremony unveiling it.

11. Consider having a donor ‘sponsor’ a day. If there are 250 work days a year (minus weekends and holidays), consider having a board at the front that says, “Our work today sponsored by ______.” You can also put a banner on your website for the day and include it in the signature lines in your emails to get others to think about doing this, too. You can include your 250 highest-dollar donors, or any donor who gives enough to pay for one day of work (essentially your annual budget multiplied by .4%). If you have a million-dollar budget, any donor of $4,000 or more is paying for a day of your being there, so this would certainly work for your high-dollar corporate donors, foundations, and your biggest donors. Ask them if they want to choose the day, and if they want to come that day, or if you can send them a picture for their offices. Some people will get a kick out of it and sponsor their anniversary or their spouses’ birthday, others won’t care about it but you will still want to do it anyway to encourage others to give. It also gives a morale boost to the staff when they see that others care enough to sponsor their work.

There are many more ways to thank donors, but these are a few to get you thinking.

If you have questions about fundraising or want to talk about having your board of directors trained in fundraising, contact me, Katherine Wertheim, CFRE, at katherine@werth-it.com.

I’m pleased to post a guest blog today by Shari Morgan-Bridges, a respected fundraiser and consultant in Ventura County California.

When is Silence Golden?
by Shari Morgan-Bridges, MBA

I sat down next to the Development Director (DD) of a local nonprofit and casually remarked that I had recently spoken with her Board Chair. Her reply that, “he’s useless and shouldn’t even be on the board,” left me more than a little surprised. Since that was the first time I had met the DD there was no way she could have known whether I had a personal connection to her board chair or someone else in her organization.

A few months later I was speaking to the Executive Director of another local nonprofit about an open position. During that conversation I learned, among other things, what an “awful mess” the last employee had left behind and how “incompetent” that employee had been. Again, I was more than a little surprised by the lack of discretion. I might have known the previous employee and I could have been a potential donor who now knew that certain business practices had not been followed.

Both encounters reminded me of the line spoken by Olympia Dukakis in Steel Magnolia’s, “If you don’t have anything nice to say about anybody, come sit by me!” Both encounters left me wondering what each may say about me after our brief meeting. I also left wondering about their organizational culture, employee morale, and the leadership of the Board of Directors. If I had been considering a donation, I would have had to reconsider. If I had been considering applying for a job, I would have run in the other direction.

These two examples of workplace gossip that has oozed out of the organization’s walls and into the public are unfortunately not uncommon. Frequently, the gossip is about critical workplace issues that have remained unresolved. Organizations that have built internal silos and use a top-down, command-and-control style of leadership often have employees who feel powerless and frustrated—the perfect combination for workplace gossip. In the case of the DD, without knowing the particulars, I could feel her frustration and sense of powerlessness. So, what is workplace gossip? Is it gossip if it’s true? Is gossip always bad?

Gossip is a sign, and while gossip may be in vogue for the entertainment business, it can do real damage to your business. One type of workplace gossip is “complaining to someone about a situation in which they have no ability to remedy.” This type of gossip is frequently a sign of a much bigger organizational problem. It very often means that employees don’t feel heard, and there is a breakdown in the communication channel that leads to problem solving. If organizations had a soul, this is the type of gossip that should lead to “soul searching” for a structure better attuned to communication and employee engagement.

Gossip meant to malign the organization or another individual should be immediately addressed. If an employee is maligning the organization, they really are not a fit any longer. If someone is maligning a fellow employee, bringing the two into the same room to “clear the air” is often all that is needed and a side benefit might be the cessation of further gossip. Most people find it uncomfortable to look someone in the eye and repeat the untrue or unkind words said. On the other hand, hiding the complainer’s identity by appointing the CEO or HR manager the go-between breeds mistrust between co-workers, and allows the complainer to slant the story in any convenient manner.

Halting gossip starts at the top and requires clear HR policies. Obviously it takes at least two to gossip—one to talk and one to listen. Policies should state that listening to gossip is as offensive as speaking it. Organizations should have a very clear complaint process that is applied consistently to everyone in every department. With that said, no one wants to work in an environment where being a tattletale is rewarded. That kind of environment leads to suspicion and low morale. Conversely, no one wants to work in an environment where they feel vulnerable to their colleagues. What is the answer? Is forcing the employees into a vow of silence really the answer? Learn more in Part II…“When is Silence Bad Business?”

Just remember, others can tell more about you by what you say about others, than by what others say about you.

Thanks to Shari Morgan-Bridges for this guest blog. If you would like to write a guest blog about fundraising or the nonprofit world, please send your idea to me, Katherine Wertheim, CFRE, at katherine@werth-it.com.

One day last week, I got two calls about capital campaigns. Here’s the response I wrote to one of them, a charter school, about how to start:

Today is December 1. You have 31 days until the end of the year. What can you do to fund raise? Here are six recommendations I have if you need money now.

1) Get on the phone to your highest-dollar donors and ask to meet with them this month. You can schedule these appointments yourself or get a staff member to do them or pay someone to make them. If you start calling today, you can have appointments next week. Strive to set up three appointments a day, three days a week, for three weeks. When you meet with them, ask them for a gift that’s 10 times higher than their previous high gift. The worst they can do is say no. Yes this is hard. Yes it’s the holidays. Yes there’s a recession. But 40% of money donated by individuals comes in during November and December. If you need money, this is the best thing to do.

2) Ask several people, preferably board members, to throw small fundraising events in their homes this month. Have them tell their friends it’s a fundraising event but there’s no cost to attend and no requirement to give, they just ask people to attend with an open mind.  At the events, which should last an hour, serve something simple like Danish and coffee in the morning, tea in the afternoon, or dessert in the evening. Make a presentation and ask for money. Repeat as needed. You could do five of these in a weekend at five different homes. I’ve seen people put these together in as little as five to eight days. Again, yes, it’s the holidays and people are busy, but if you need money this is a quick way to get it.

3) Send out emails to get donations. They’re quick to put together and people can click on a link. However, be prepared that they have a low open rate — 30-40% of people won’t even open them. Not everyone will click on the link. You’ll need to write a compelling subject line to get people to even read them. However, they’re quick to put together and I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention them. To make them more compelling, ask your board and top donors to create a matching gift, and for every dollar donated, they’ll match it up to a certain amount. It gives people a reason to give now.

4) Get on the phone and call your donors and volunteers. Create teams of volunteers who will make calls. Pull everyone together in a room on a certain day and time and have them call your best people for a couple of hours. Again, it’s hard to do, but if you need the money then it’s effective. Using volunteers means that you have almost no costs (perhaps pizza while you train the group in what to say).

5) Maximize your direct mail letter, if you haven’t sent it already (if you have, consider another one). Personalize it, and ask for dollar amounts specific to each person. For example, use an entire page to ask for their gift, not a small coupon. On that page, write “Your last gift was $XXX on DATE.” For example, “Your last gift was $100 on December 31, 2010.” Then write, “Won’t you consider a gift of 3X to help more people this year?” It may seem bold to ask for a gift that’s three times higher, but many people will give it if you give them a reason to do so. Again, if you can get board members or key donors to issue a matching grant, it helps you in fundraising, because you can say “Every dollar you give now will be matched one-for-one, so that your gift doubles.”

6) Finally, work on your public relations. Now’s the time to call your local paper and television news and pitch your holiday stories. Think about what would be compelling and work on getting PR on it right away.

That’s what you can do to raise money immediately, even during the holidays, even during the recession.

If you have questions about fundraising or need coaching in fundraising, please contact me, Katherine Wertheim, CFRE, at katherine@werth-it.com.

Is the role of the executive director to be the chief fundraiser, the chief administrator, or the chief program officer?

If I was reading this, I might think “She’s going to say ‘all three’.” But that’s wrong.

I believe that the role of the executive director is to be the chief fundraiser. The mistake I see in many organizations is that the executive director thinks s/he is the chief program officer. Sometimes, the board hires the person who would make the best chief program officer, or the organization was started by a founder who really wants to be a program person but doesn’t want to have a boss.

There’s a reason the executive director has to be the chief fundraiser: it’s the hardest job to hire someone to do. There aren’t enough fundraising professionals. In America, there are about 1.6 million nonprofits and about 160,000 professional fundraisers. When Children’s Hospital Los Angeles can have 90 professional fundraisers on staff, and the University of California Los Angeles can have almost 500 development professionals, that means fewer fundraisers to go around. Multiply that by every city in the United States and you’ll see what I mean — there aren’t enough professional fundraisers for all the nonprofits.

Further, high-dollar donors expect to meet with the chief executive. The definition of a high-dollar donor varies: if your nonprofit has a budget of less than a million dollars, then someone who can give $1,000 in a high-dollar donor. If your budget is higher, the chief executive might not meet with someone for less than $10,000, $20,000, $50,000, $100,000, or even a million dollars or more.

If you answered my opening question with the idea that the executive director is the chief administrator, you’re wrong. It’s easy to hire administrators; their are lots of people who can organize and manage a nonprofit. You just have to empower them to handle all the concerns. Staff members should not be running to the chief executive with problems about administrative tasks. A deputy executive director or a COO can handle those.

But what do you do if you’re a staff member and you have a chief executive who wants to do anything except fundraise? It depends on what you feel you’re capable of doing. If you’re bold, you can sit down with that person and explain what needs to be done. If you’re not bold, perhaps you can work behind the scenes. Can you talk to other staff members and ask that they not bother the executive with lower-level problems? Can you set up someone who is the go-between to talk to the executive? Can you talk to a board member about the problem? Perhaps you can bring in someone else to deliver the news to the executive?

If you’re the fundraiser, I would recommend that you keep the executive director busy and out of the office, meeting with high-dollar donors. You coach them in how to do it, and you schedule appointments to get them away from work. This might be difficult to do at first, but the less time they’re in the office the less they can deal with other problems that should be handled by an administrator or a program officer.

Finally, if you’re frustrated, I suggest you bring in an outsider like me who can deliver the news that needs to be conveyed. Because I’m trained to work with nonprofits, I can say the things that everyone else wants to say but can’t. I’m not afraid I’ll lose my job, and I’m not afraid I’ll be penalized. I can say to an executive director, “You need to focus on fundraising. No one else will do it. If you want to be a program director or an administrator, take the pay cut and do that. If you want to be paid more, and you want the title of executive director, then you need to step up and do the fundraising. No one else will. This is where you’re needed. If you don’t want to fundraise, then step down, because your job is to be the chief fundraiser.” I can say the thing that everyone else thinks. People listen to me precisely because I’m the outsider.

I hope that is helpful. If you want training in fundraising for your nonprofit board and staff members, contact me, Katherine Wertheim, CFRE, at katherine@werth-it.com.