Dealing with cuts
Tuesday, April 28th, 2009A professional fundraiser just wrote me about serious cuts her organization is making at the national level. Even though she’s local, and her office hasn’t experienced any cuts, and even though fundraisers are the last to be cut (because we make money for all the other positions to get paid), she’s still worried.
So here’s what I wrote to her.
“All we can do is fundraise for our needs and build ourselves up to be stronger than ever.
This is kind of like the “Sword of Damocles” — did you ever read that story? Damocles is sitting at a banquet and someone comes up to him and says how lucky he is. Damocles points at the ceiling, where a sword hangs over his head, and it’s hanging just by a thread. So, for you, you’ve got this horrible sword dangling over you, but the best you can do is just fundraise the hell out of the place and keep going. It’s emotionally hard, I know, but really, look at it this way: they’ve been threatening to get rid of another staff member since December, and it’s almost May and nothing has happened. So maybe we’re safe for now.”
Here’s the www.dictionary.com short explanation about the Sword of Damocles:
“A flatterer who, having extolled the happiness of Dionysius, tyrant of Syracuse, was seated at a banquet with a sword suspended over his head by a single hair to show him the perilous nature of that happiness.”
Do you have concerns about your organization? Frankly, if you’re experiencing hard times, these are precisely the times to get trained in fundraising. Bring in someone to teach all of you how to fundraise, so you don’t have to face cuts. If you would like to talk about holding a training for your nonprofit, write me, Katherine Wertheim, CFRE, at katherine@werth-it.com or here in the comments field at www.werth-it.com/blog.