Some time ago, an email raised the question: “When you are setting your fundraising goal for the coming year, is there a formula or commonly accepted “rule” on which to base an increase over the prior year’s goal?”
There is a basic ethical rule in fundraising — that you cannot and should not raise more money than that for which you have established a need.
The strategic planning process of an institution, its annual planning and income forecasting all lead to the establishment of fundraising goals — goals that are established based on two major criteria.
The idea that an annual fundraising goal can be increased arbitrarily, not based on actual need, is counter to the whole concept of accountability to our constituents.
To raise money, we tell our prospects of our need, and ask them to help us meet that need. If we raise our goal beyond our institution’s actual (established) need, but still tell prospects we “need” their support, we are (in essence) lying to them.
Only if an increase in an annual fundraising goal is based on a real need — not a “we can always use the money” rationale, does it have legitimacy.
In addition, the existence of a need for additional funding is only half of the justification for increasing the goal. The other half has to do with whether that goal will be attainable.
Big rule in fundraising: Never set a goal that you aren’t sure you can meet. And that assuredness must be based on your fundraising history, your knowledge of your current donors, your potential donors, the state of the economy, etc.
In essence, you don’t want to risk not meeting a fundraising goal, as failing to meet a goal suggests to potential donors that your community/constituency doesn’t really support you. Such a failure can (often does) significantly reduce contributed income in subsequent years.
The mistake made by too many “development” officers, including the one who asked the question, is that they focus on the process, when they should be keeping their sights on the reason the process was created.
Have a comment or a question about starting, evaluating or expanding your fundraising program? Contact Hank Lewis. With over 30 years of counseling in major gifts, capital campaigns, bequest programs and the planning studies to precede these three, he’ll be pleased to answer your questions.
Some days I long for the days of just knowing and doing my part for the cave, but that was a long time ago. It was more basic then. I taught myself. Not really. I observed and modeled the behavior of others, my elders. They knew what to do. Sometimes, I saw what they did and thought another way might be useful and tried it. If that new way worked better, I kept doing it that way. If not, there was no point to keeping it.
I looked outside for the best ways to do things, and found others who had already discovered very good ways and copied them. It was simpler that way and saved time. I learned that if I sharpened my spear and kept it sharpened I was more likely to kill the first time I threw it and struck my prey. I already knew where the vital organs were; my father taught me–or was it my uncle? I taught my brothers. Later, when game was scarce I had to do what the others who couldn’t hunt did. I gathered roots, herbs, berries, fruits and vegetables–anything edible–even bark for medicine. Who taught me how…I can’t remember, but she was old and wise, experienced in the ways.
I became more and more experienced myself in other matters of my cave as well. Others sought me out to share that experience, and some of my own good ideas, too; and so I was proud. We even shared those ideas with other caves or tribes of the plains. In my own cave, I was recognized as someone good to follow–and others who sought to learn from my example, who followed me, who saw what I saw and did what I did.
I was recognized as someone good to shadow. Others followed my example, saw what I saw and did what I did.
It was a simple life. Hard but good.
Then, a stronger cave combined forces with another cave or tribe came and took our land with our natural resources, and many of our people. It made that cave stronger and us weaker. Only a few of us survived, and we started again. As one who was more experienced, I became one of the leaders. We found new land and new resources, and others like us, or those with another clan or tribe looking for a chance to do more for themselves –too make us strong again. And, we were.
We are strong and get stronger everyday. We stand up to the clan/tribe that defeated us before, and they regard us with respect; they dare not attack. They know we are smart. We find ways to work around each other, even together when we must. We map out territories; it works out well for everyone. We have even begun to send old and wise ones to teach them some of our new ways–especially if it helps both our clans. We have much to share. It is making us both solid and safe. It is our hope it will make us thrive as a people for a long time, and there will always be plenty.
The leaders must keep us secure. They know things. They must continue to be clever. That way we can always keep our people fed and healthy. The caves and the tribes all have smart people who learn what they need to learn. They seem to never stop. This, I think, is a good thing. We will survive and grow. We are a wise people.
Training changes you. It makes you better for the company and you can never get away. They won’t let you; you’ve become too valuable to lose to a competitor. Sure it makes it easier for you to do your job, but it makes you think of more things that make you even more invaluable to the company; it makes more work for you–okay, and more money, promotions-therefore responsibility, and prestige or reputation. Credibility. Can you handle it?
A little different approach, I admit. But don’t you get the feeling that sometimes it’s just so obvious–that it’s all around us, waiting for us to take advantage? The survival skills we learned in prehistoric times are still valid–only we have labels. See another article of mine, What Would the Cave Man DO: How We learned All We Know About Training. Training is not just part of a job; it’s part of life and survival of the fittest. The fittest are those who keep learning when you don’t have time to wait millions of years for evolution to kick in. Sorry, Darwin.
Please check out my other articles here on the subjects of training and communication. I love credibility in the workplace, seeing good plan come together, and I love seeing people who love their jobs. Specialists are great, but thinking outside the clichéd box belongs to those specialists and others, who are always willing to learn, always looking for connections; they are the cave man learners of today. I also have a website where my views go beyond training and development. I co-exist in another world of performance criticism and commentary as you’ll find on my website. Look under WHAT I SAY. You’d be surprised how these worlds intersect. Communication is after all, communication. The best communicators can sell anything or not have to. Our job is only part of who we are. Now, where did I put my spear…
Surprise! Your organization is experiencing a major change…again. It’s a new process…or a merger…or reorganization…or a new product launch…or a new customer…OK, you get the picture. Just about the time you begin to feel comfortable with the last major change, here comes another one. It’s a sign of the times.
In this series, we will examine some aspects of leading yourself, you team, and your organization through change. Let’s start with you; if you are a supervisor, manager or leader at any level, you will be influential in the success of this change.
In my experience, most change efforts fail because either you have absentee sponsors or you have the wrong sponsor. Communication strategies, at all levels involved with the change must be thoughtfully planned out. It is understandable that leaders still have to do their “day job” but to be effective at leading change they need to plan enough time for their visibility and they must also carefully select their “doers” in order to accomplish their goals. Let’s look at what you can do to facilitate the change process.
For leaders:
1. Be visible. Don’t delegate the change to someone else to….don’t kick off the change and then retreat to your office or another project. You need to stay visible and involved all the way through the change. Leverage your current meeting rhythms, town hall meetings, whatever you do that gets you in front of the troops. If being visible is not your style or approach – get a coach and work on it. Remember not communicating is communicating something!
2. Take an active role. Get involved deeply in change efforts; ask for additional assignments. Working through a major change is a great opportunity for you to increase your own visibility and skills. Good leaders step up to communicating change. Make a presentation, deliver key messages, and go out to other locations to talk about the change. During a recent successful airline merger, senior executives made it a point to be highly visible and made all attempts to stay out in front and communicate what was going on. It really made a difference in how well they were able to move through the change.
3. Build a coalition of partners. Here is another chance to get outside your silo and engage with other leaders. Enlist them in the change. Develop key messages together about the change. Send out key communication briefings together. How much solidarity would you create by sending out a change message that comes jointly from, let’s say, Operations, IT, and HR, all reinforcing key messages about the change? Partner up!
4. Enlist your front line managers and supervisors. These are the people who are “in the trenches” throughout the change. This is where the change really takes place. Front line managers hear the concerns, help employees struggle with emotions, and see what adjustments are needed to make the change successful. Help managers develop their skills in change leadership by coaching or training them. This is the most effective level to manage change in organizations – managers and supervisor levels are the most trusted, and the closest to those impacted by the change.
5. Reinforce the troops. Take time to celebrate each milestone, providing plenty of appreciation, thanks and fun to help sustain momentum for the next steps. Examples might include a pizza party, picnic, town hall meeting with awards and live music, followed by cake and toasts.
We have taken an overview look at communication strategies you can take to help your organization move through change. Next time, we will look at some specifics for front line managers and supervisors.
Today’s Wall Street Journal published an excerpt from the forthcoming book by former Chrysler and GM exec Bob Lutz. Lutz says that in the auto industry a knowledgeable autocrat is the successful model for a leader. In critiquing the bureaucracy for which GM has been famous for, Lutz says that the autocrat is the model for leadership that is decisive and can make the tough decisions needed to bring new models to the market.
One of the most common questions business owners are asking now is, “how do I get take advantage of social media?”
Thankfully for those who are still worried that the process is difficult or overly stressful, marketer and self-proclaimed social media addict Pam Moore has laid out a simple list of how to get started in a Social Media Today article. A quote: Step 1: Do your own research on how to best leverage social media to meet business goals and objectives.
Step 2: Develop a business and integrated marketing plan inclusive of goals and objectives. Be sure to focus clearly on your target market segments with a goal of knowing them and getting in their head the best you possibly can.
Step 3: If you don’t have the skills and knowledge of social media internally, hire the agency or consultant to help you integrate social media into your business. Be sure that they understand integrated marketing, the importance of setting goals and objectives and can help you develop and execute a plan to meet yours! Refuse to accept a list of random acts of social media (RAMs). If the plan is not integrated then the RAMs will eat your ROI for breakfast, lunch and dinner!
Step 4: Integrate social media into your business plan with a focus on leveraging social media to support biz goals and objectives. Your business plan may need to be adjusted based upon your new findings and research of the social media landscape.
Step 5: Develop an integrated social media strategy, approach and plan that best supports your business goals and objectives.
Step 6: Execute the integrated marketing, social media and business plan.
Step 7: Continuously analyze, measure and refine your approach, strategies and tactics based upon achievement to goals and objectives.
I like this list because of the advice to focus on not just creating new pages and profiles all over the Web, but tailoring the focus to the business’ individual marketing or communication wants, needs, and goals. Without this, you will fail to attract stakeholders and especially to create a rapport that will keep them engaged and coming back for more.
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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
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Do you want to create goodwill with customers, attract new customers, and possibly go viral? Then offering an ebook on issues important to your Ideal Customer may be one of the most powerful things you can do.
Ebooks online live forever. Once you write it, it will be working for you 24/7. Be sure to use your best keywords in the title, subtitle, and chapter headings. Use keywords 3% of the time in your content. That means that out of every 100 words, use your keywords 3 times. Doing this is vitally important to getting found.
The electronic book market is exploding with the advent of the electronic book reader, such as Amazon’s Kindle, Sony Reader, and Apple iPad. People are eager to load content onto them, especially if it’s something they enjoy or need.
At these sites, you can upload your digital content files (ebooks) for free. Then you can give them away, or sell them. Additionally, Lulu (http://www.Lulu.com) offers a host of pre-publishing, marketing and distribution services.
Ebooks are an enticing way to get email subscribers to opt-in. Usually free, they offer in-depth information, complemented by links and more resources. In order to implement an e-book strategy effectively, choose one significant problem from your customer profile list and expound upon the solution. Don’t cover a range of issues (or opportunities) in an e-book. Rather, make it 15-20 pages and repeat for additional topics. It’s not necessary or good business to give everything away in one ebook.
Get Oriented
If you’re unfamiliar with the format and content of ebooks, search Google for “free ebooks” and take a look at a few of them. Choose one or two that you like as models and just start writing! By laying out the table of contents first, you can narrow your focus and organize your thoughts for writing the content.
Ms. Chapman’s new book has a name change! The Net-Powered Entrepreneur – A Step-by-Step Guide will be available very soon. With offices in Nashville Tennessee, but working virtually with international clients, Lisa M. Chapman serves her clients as a business and marketing coach, business planning consultant and social media consultant. As a Founder of iBrand Masters, a social media consulting firm, Lisa Chapman helps clients to establish and enhance their online brand, attract their target market, engage them in meaningful social media conversations, and convert online traffic into revenues. Email: Lisa @ LisaChapman.com
Janae: Janet, thanks for joining me to talk about spiritual deepening in life and work. As you know, you’ve been one of my mentors who has inspired me to deepen my spiritual evolution. I know you are passionate about this and I’ll be interested in hearing more about your perspective. I remember when I first met you. I had asked you to come to speak on Spirituality and Work at Custom Research, the company I was working for in the early nineties.
Janet: Janae, thanks for inviting me to dialogue with you. I’m so pleased to help your readers explore this topic, Spiritual Deepening in Life and Work. My most vivid memory of my work at Custom Research was asking the group a question to get us started, “Have you ever had a spiritual experience at work?” and spending the next hour hearing all those amazing stories. I was so moved hearing people tell stories about being kind on purpose, praying for clients, sensing a power beyond them in their creative work etc. In my recollection we all left longing for more time and more conversation because of the spiritual energy that was underneath the surface of most people’s lives. It inspired me.
Janae: And since then you’ve gradually come to dedicate much of your time to spiritual deepening in life and work, right? What forms has this spiritual deepening taken for you in the last several years?
Janet: As a summary, I’d say that I now experience life as an amateur Anchoress, which means a grounded presence in the world. As a direct result of what’s happened in my own life experience I’ve developed classes and products that feed and open the hearts of people who are longing for more meaning and spiritual intimacy. I could just list some things that I’ve developed but I think it would be more interesting to tell my story of how these things evolved from my own struggles and from a call to surrender my life and work in favor of a smaller, simpler and more peaceful way to live.
Janae: I’d like to hear more of your story too, so where do we begin?
Janet: One example of my initiation into the deepening way of life was to co-author the book, The Critical Journey. This book described the stages in the life of faith and it included the Wall, which is the place where we release our old way of life, heal spiritually and psychologically and move beyond our ego. That book and the fact that I had begun spiritual direction in my own life, furthered my journey into spiritual deepening personally and professionally. Then fast- forward several years, into the early years of the new century: I met the Wall squarely in my own life and it has never been the same since.
Janae: I had, by that time, joined yourReal Power Network and was able to see some of that transformation myself. It’s been powerful to watch you over these last ten years. What was most memorable and what ways has it changed you?
Janet: What was most memorable was that, as I was coming through the Wall myself, I couldn’t work in the same way I had before. I was a high achiever and was not only running my own business of speaking and writing but I was also the executive director of a national non-profit. Almost overnight I couldn’t sustain that life style any more. I was very anxious and I got nosebleeds when I spoke in public. Clearly my body did not want to work that way any more. But I was newly single and felt a lot of pressure to keep up that pace. I “knew” that this anxiety was a spiritual call for me and that my life had become disordered and needed to change. So I started letting it change, started letting go, and holding onto all things more lightly. I spoke of this change in a video recently in case anyone wants to hear me describe it live. It can be viewed at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0bmPd-CZjM
Janae: I think that was during the time we were doing the training certification for the Real Power Network, right?
Janet: That’s right. I was being certified along with six others in our network (in a process you helped design, thanks! Picture of us with certification.) and I chose as my culminating project an art book depicting Beauty as Thin Place, a place where the holy breaks through and we get a glimpse of something beyond us. I chose twenty personal examples of thin places in my life. So, for example, I depicted the beauty of forgiveness, the beauty of the fire, the beauty of self worth, the beauty of inner storms, the beauty of relinquishing as well as the beauty of the double play in baseball. 🙂 It was an amazing project and it opened the door to more creativity that had been hiding inside of me, unable to surface until my spirituality caused my life change. I started moving from making it happen to letting it happen. That made all the difference. I trusted the Holy more and started allowing for a different scenario for my future. Several others in the network were like angels to me during that time, encouraging me to take this road less traveled.
Janae: And that kind of opened the floodgates as I recall. How did it all happen from that point on?
Janet: The first step, as I recall, was the gift of poems. I wrote about fifteen poems in one summer and they just fell into my lap. I’d never experienced that kind of creative energy even though I’d written books. These poems were different for me; simple, straight forward, and honest. One of my favorites was just four lines long. It’s called “That’s All I’ve Got to Say” and it goes like this:
I created you
now let me love you
that’s all I’ve got to say
would you like me to repeat that.
I wrote poems about how we don’t let ourselves feel God’s love, about how addictions are a way of looking for God, and about the inevitability of pain as a way to break our hearts open. These poems just arrived, as friends from home.
Janae: Yes, I remember those. My favorite was the one in which you and God had a conversation about whether you would go into the scary places or not. God was willing to let you have your way, by not facing your fear. Alas, you discovered it didn’t work. And I know you put those poems into a small booklet to share on your web site www.janethagberg.com.
Janet: That poem you mentioned was called “God Smiles.” I love that one. And yes, I was starting to share these gifts with others through my web site. The next thing that emerged was a whole new art form for me, emerging from my Beauty project. I love beautiful paper so for my birthday one year I went to an art store and bought several sheets of exquisite paper. When I brought it home it took the form of poignant depictions of the ways we rest in God, all different images on black paper backgrounds. I see these as contemporary icons, an art form that draws you into its story and then points you towards God. I made fifteen of them in the next several months. A few examples are: Resting in God…In the middle of a storm, in the potter’s hands, under the protection of God’s tent and in the presence of our enemies. Other products emerged at about that same time, like a small set of sixty-four specially chosen scripture cards about the inner life wrapped in a little purple bag. They were remarkably pertinent whenever I drew one to find out what God was saying to me that day or in certain situations.
Now I can imagine that some readers are nodding off to sleep so it’s OK with me if anyone wants to tune out about now. But there is more…
Janae: Yes, as I recall some of the most interesting things are yet to come. You started getting much more involved with people on the margins of our society at that point, as I recall?
Janet: You are spot on. I had gotten involved with an inner city multi-racial church and an organization that encouraged suburban people to get personally involved with marginalized people. I taught classes in which people from these two worlds became mutual friends and we also took them on inner city pilgrimages. It was utterly amazing to see the spiritual transformation that occurred when people who thought they were so different actually found out they weren’t that different and in fact could learn from one another. One man who hosted us for lunch at the homeless shelter told us his story. He had a master’s degree in engineering but when his mother got sick he had to take care of her. He had promised her he would take care of her as she, a single mom, had taken care of him. As she got worse he stayed home more and eventually lost his job. When she went into a care facility he had to leave the house and soon he was homeless. This story really stunned the people in the group who had never expected homeless people to have advanced degrees. And yet there are many homeless people with college degrees.
So the conversations began and spiritual change started to happen. At that time in my life I was also journeying with two refugees, one from China and one from Africa (a survivor of torture), both of whom became my friends. I was learning about survival, about faith and about the idea of living my priorities. When you’ve had to give up everything, you care less about material things and more about what matters most. I gave away a lot of my things, reduced my expenses and began to live a simpler and more creative life. It was a freeing time rather than a time of diminishment.
Janae: It seems like you are getting more actively involved in spiritual deepening within your own life and in these classes involving the marginalized? Were there any other classes like this?
Janet: Yes, it sparked me to concentrate on teaching things that would deepen people spiritually and thus change their lives and work. So I began to co-teach classes on moving from success to significance to surrender, on the process of transformation at the Wall, and I also taught on-line classes on the inner life. In my spiritual direction practice I worked primarily with people who were at the Wall and wanting to make significant changes. But I’m getting a little ahead of myself. First came all the essays…
Janae: I love this story because you really didn’t want to write them, did you?
Janet: No, I didn’t want to write any more. I felt I was finished writing and one December my spiritual director asked me if I was writing about any of the things that were happening to me. For instance, I had a gift of tears. I couldn’t stop my crying episodes. I was not depressed or under stress, I just couldn’t stop crying. She pointed out that one of my favorite mentors, St. Igantius had the same experience and asked me to read about it. I did and it all became clear to me, that this was a new way for me to deepen and experience more intimacy with God. So I wrote. And since writing about that particular gift of tears, I’ve met several other people who’ve experienced the same thing, a gift I knew nothing about earlier. I also started listening to my body giving me messages through physical symptoms that were directly related to what was going on in my life. As I said, I was not that interested in writing, but my director strongly encouraged me to do it any way, just to see what happened.
Janae: I’ve heard that spiritual directors are like angels sometimes, asking us to do things that we may not see for ourselves. Sounds like she was one of your angels.
Janet: Believe me, I’ve had a lot of angels along the way. Sooo, kind of against my better judgment I began writing short essays, at my spiritual director’s request. They began falling into my lap too, just like the poems and the icons. Since then I’ve written about seventy essays about a wide range of topics pertaining to the inner life, many of which are honest questions I’ve had or the real ways in which God shows up in my life. Many are about pain or questions about God or about our shadows. Several of the essays end up being about how funny God is. One is about the spirituality of baseball—no surprise! I don’t know where these essays are headed yet, but Fay, one of my friends in the network, encouraged me to start a blog. I didn’t want to do it because of the pressure to produce writing regularly, but when she said I could load all of my essays on the blog and then publish one a week, I decided to try it. Wow, it’s amazing. Now I just invite people to subscribe and then I send the essays along. The theme of the blog is “at river’s edge” and it depicts how God is inviting us deeper and deeper into the river’s current so we can be more trusting of God’s hand in our lives. The address is atriversedge.wordpress.com FREE!
Janae: I subscribe to your blog and you need to tell us what else you have in creative storage on your blog. It’s not just writing.
Janet: No, I’ve not limited it to words. I also include icons and photos and poems and videos from time to time. One thing I’ve not mentioned is that my paper icons have morphed into quilted icons, since quilting is one of my favorite things. I would not have thought of this but a woman in my quilt group suggested it. And voila, it worked. I love putting these images on cloth and hanging them on my wall or giving them away. Just a month or so ago when I was in the middle of a stressful time with a flood in my condo, a business transition, and no heat or air conditioning, I had another creative gift, the idea that I could have a signature scripture verse that I could use for icons, one that fit what I’ve been teaching about for a long time. The verse is “Weeping may tarry for the night but joy comes with the morning.” Ps. 30:5 It fits so well the idea of the Wall and freedom, darkness and light etc. So I’ve made several six-inch icons of this idea, that I call pocket icons, and I will be selling them on my web site and perhaps on the blog in the future. Here’s a couple of examples of my smaller icons. So more creative ideas are breaking through…
Janae: It sounds like you are willing to let things evolve and just see what the Holy has in store. That takes faith. What gives you that kind of faith?
Janet: It does take faith. I believe that it is primarily due to my quieting down and letting intimacy with God infiltrate me more thoroughly. I’m actually grateful for my anxiety reaction those many years ago. In fact, I have to monitor this regularly since it is my body’s sign to me when I’m overdoing things or facing an unsafe situation. When I trust God, my life doesn’t lose all stress but I manage it differently and hold all things more lightly. I laugh more and I’m continually surprised by grace. My overwhelming feeling is gratitude and now I feel that my cup is truly running over. “That’s all I’ve got to say. Would you like me to repeat that??” 🙂
Janae: Thanks so much for telling us about spiritual deepening in such a personal, honest and beautiful way. It certainly is an inspiration for me and I’m sure for others as well. I appreciate knowing you. If people have personal questions may they contact you?
Janet: Yes, by all means. My email is janethagberg@comcast.net
It is often said in firms that “we simply don’t have a project management culture”. This can be true but a) what doe it mean and assuming it is true, b) what can be done about it?
So, what is Organisational culture?
Organisational culture definitely exists. There is much written on organisational culture – just Google it and you’ll find loads of detail but in essence this is what it means.
All organisations that have existed for at least some time will have developed a “culture”. In its most simplest, it is the values and habits that are promoted by the organisation is being important, or even crucial to the business. This could be and often is extended to the behaviours that individuals and even teams’ exhibit in discharging normal business – and this can and will include projects. It will also extend to what (does and does not) get noticed by seniors in a business. A great form of this is the examples of behaviours or practice that are “promoted” (say in a corporate magazine) as being or value to the business – often though this focuses more on results than process, sometimes with the two becoming very confused.
To determine your own culture it is quite easy to write or find a list of terms that describe typical cultures, and use that to ask a cross section of people from a single business to assess which of those terms most closely describe their firm – it usually works very well to highlight the sort of things like behaviours that are highlighted as being desirable – including that which is sometimes be referred to as the “hero factor”.
So how does this relate to project management? Well, many firms will have developed at least a framework to describe how projects should be defined, planned, managed and closed-out. Often, these frameworks will follow or replicate practices that are generally considered to be valuable or even fundamental to project (delivery) success. However, despite this, when real projects come along the actual practice on the ground is often light years away from the written framework or procedures. Often, this could even have been driven directly from somewhere at the top in the business. That is usually the point when two or more people are having a coffee chat and one will say ”…… yes, but it’s just not in our culture….. etc etc”.
In practical terms, this can often mean that staff within the business will not necessarily follow (even in principle) what someone in the organisation believes is strategically important to planning and delivering successful projects. Others in the business may feel that managing projects is little more than running or chairing meetings, and that “Project Management” adds little value. Sadly, in their business they may well be right.
So, if this is the case, what can we do? I will address this in my next post and in the meantime, please feel free to add your comments and suggestions.
Show Me the Money & Keep It Coming
For today’s look at grantsmanship, I am outlining a four-step process for successful nonprofit grantsmanship. And, because many people – not me, but many other people – find grantsmanship a bit dull, there are plain-language subtitles to lighten it up a bit.
Grant Prospecting
Figuring out who has the money: “Prospecting” is the process of looking for likely grantors to fund your organization. I’ll go into more detail in next month’s post about what makes a good prospect, but the most important factor to look for is significant overlap between the foundation’s purpose and your organization’s mission. In later posts I’ll also describe more about prospecting and some good tools to use.
Grant Cultivation
Getting in good with those who have the money: Cultivation is an extremely important step, just as important as identifying good prospects. Building a relationship with foundation trustees and/or managers takes time, but is a valuable investment to position your grant applications for success.
From my own experience, I can verify that working with potential grantors before submitting an application will result in a much higher acceptance rate. It can also save you time, because meeting with a “hot” grant prospect may yield information about their foundation’s purpose that suggests they are not such a good fit with your organization. Better to find out early before spending time to develop the proposal.
Grant Development
Telling those who have the money what they want to hear: this step could also be entitled, “Proposal Development,” and includes writing and submitting grant proposals (including budgets), and sometimes planning projects if they haven’t been implemented yet at your organization.
Grant writing is creative, but it’s not freeform fiction. Following the grantor’s guidelines and telling them what they want to hear is very important. And, grantors certainly don’t want your budgets to be works of fiction.
Grant Management
Telling those who gave you the money that you spent it well: I often find this step to be the most rewarding because I can report to the grantor that we did meet the goals and objectives described in the proposal they funded.
This step, and the Grant Development step before it, also requires working closely with your organization’s program staff to establish goals and objectives, and monitor and report on outcomes.
When these four steps are done well – with each step considered and implemented – you can be sure that your grants program will be productive and cost-effective.
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Lynn deLearie Consulting, LLC, helps nonprofit organizations develop, enhance and expand grant programs, and helps them secure funding from foundations and corporations. She can be contacted at lynn.delearie@gmail.com.
We have to understand and cater to our worker needs now more than ever for a company to be successful. I’ve been mulling over this for some time–since I received the following comment:
In the past few years the training field perhaps more than any other has been undergoing tremendous transition and evolution–from a warm-and-fuzzy function housed in an office all the way down the hall to a strategically aligned business unit to…what? First lets review why training unequivocally has arrived as a profession…
These people do not see black and white, but many shades of gray or even color; in some cases they see more of the real world we do not. I’d be willing to bet they are more than engineers, scientists, or business strategists; they are Renaissance men and women.
I believe it was my job as a teacher of “fuzzy” subjects, as now, to take those “warm and fuzzy” subjects and demonstrate their relevance in the real world. When you’re a teenager, even a smart one, you still see the world in black and white. I probably won’t surprise you that I delighted in getting my college students to see the gray areas and venture out in the colorful creative world.
Funny thing. We admire those heroes who think outside the organization protocols; if what they do benefit us, we are happy.
These heroes do not see black and white, but many shades of gray or even color; in some cases they see more of the real world we do not. I’d be willing to bet they are more than engineers, scientists, or business strategists; they are Renaissance men and women. They understand people and behavior, and they understand how they interact with one another.
Where did they get this wisdom? They may have learned the business and corporate side of an issue, but underneath it all is communication, plain and simple, as well as philosophy and psychology, and the arts (how we humans behave in a variety of situations), which we know was here long before discussion of management as we know it today, and I might even be willing to bet some of the principles we so admire in that field may have come from philosophy.
As for problem solving, decision making and leadership you have to go back much further.
Cave man training is the way to go. Do what works. The cave man didn’t have a box to fit neatly in.
So, “training unequivocally has arrived as a profession,” not today, but long before there was even such a thing as business management. See my article on “What Would A Caveman DO?” You may not like the idea that training may be “a strategically aligned business unit.” It doesn’t elevate the status of a “warm and fuzzy” to the cold, empirical world of business, does it? A hundred or so years ago, business could be just calculating and its only worries were profits and growth. Today the business world is different. It’s more sophisticated, more complex and based more on human ingenuity–human engineering–many different people and their innovations. There’s also a “warm and fuzzy” unit called customer service. Our people who work for us have to be motivated to work, and people have to want to deal with us as a company. It’s not just about survival–at least not what we usually think of as survival.
As we became bigger than a series of teams and become individuals working alone or sporadically in different teams, we began to work different projects with different people and stopped looking after one another. It became important to communicate well to make sure our orders were understood; it became important to have the entire company follow the boss’ vision.
We compartmentalized, and with compartmentalizing we put functions in separate areas so we could concentrate people on what they did best. Sometimes the compartments become disconnected through no fault of their own because they appear not to have a valid function. I worked at Air Force Logistics Command (that’s what it was called then), and wrote feature articles for the command news service. We had so 90,000 people in the command with more than 7,000 in the headquarters building alone. You could argue the Pentagon had more “compartments,” but I doubt it. The easiest way to get a story was to walk into an office at random and ask what they did there. Compartmentalization had gone so far as to make them lonely for attention even though I’m sure they had important jobs.
Like public relations, you may not think you need them until there is a crisis. Training has the ability to be a part of the organization because it deals with keeping people proficient and happy in their jobs; it promotes the company’s future without depending on sales, bonuses and profits.
If the term offends, don’t call it training. If it makes workers wary, call it something else. I’ve always liked “professional development” or even “personal development.” In the past, smart big companies someone or several people served those functions–maybe not in the same compartmentalized way as we do now, but they were aligned to business interests at the top.
My own definition of training is broad. Most activities I call training are as benign to you as reading email, reading a magazine on a related subject, listening intently at a staff meeting. These are all a part of continuous training. Our assessments tell the managers what is needed on the human resource side of things, our training plans tell us where we are going and how long it will take to get there, and if we have to hire more people.
Cathy Missildine-Martin, SPHR, of Intellectual Capital Consulting, has been a Human Resources specialist for more than 20 years. She knows how important it is for HR to be a part of the whole business picture–and that includes training. She is often asked by college students about why get into HR. I love her enthusiasm, and I think you’ll see some similarities in our answers:
“Here are some specifics that I base my opinion on:
Our company led a strategic boot camp in Atlanta a few weeks ago. It was an all day event spent working on linking organizational strategy to HR activities. It was awesome. I saw HR professionals from some of our biggest companies, from government and education and small business, roll up their sleeves and really get the “hard-stuff.” The conversations were awesome and each person was truly speaking the language of their business.
I see a lot of interest around metrics and analysis from HR professionals. As this work is my passion, I see the demand rising for this type of knowledge. Our C-Suite demands data and HR is gearing up to deliver. Brilliant!
Gone are the days just talking about being strategic and business partners and table sitters. I am so glad as I was so tired of those conversations. I now hear conversations around real business topics like how to drive strategy and how to make sure the workforce is as productive as it can be. Love it!
“So my message is this…Go into HR but go in with a business perspective. Lead the change, and make a difference. People being productive at work is the end game and HR can impact whether that gets done….or not!”
“So my message is this…Go into HR but go in with a business perspective. Lead the change, and make a difference. People being productive at work is the end game and HR can impact whether that gets done….or not!”
I’m sure, depending on your business size, training and development may not play a direct part all the time, but it certainly plays an important part. Remember, public relations and customer service? Someone has to consider issues other than business, but they are important issues that affect business, aren’t they?
Well, those are my thoughts on the subject. Applying what I know, coupled with some guesswork. We don’t have time for a history lesson, but if you have more information on the subject and care to share, please add your comments below. We can always learn from a good dialogue. If you want to know more about humble me and my thoughts on other subjects, besides training and development, check out my website. Thanks for taking the time to read this commentary and don’t hesitate to add your own.
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