Search Results for: feedback
The Easy Money is Gone: Overcoming Barriers to Growth
As I noted in the first post of this series —The Easy Money is Gone— a smaller pie and more mouths to feed is a recipe for disaster. And yet, status quo thinking, and activity dominate within organizations. Fortunately, as reflected in the generous and thoughtful comments to that post there is optimism about the future […]
The Easy Money Is Gone
Last week was an especially brutal one for journalism. Gannett, publisher of USA Today and nearly 100 other daily newspapers and close to 1000 weeklies began slashing journalist jobs. This in a cost-cutting move anticipating that a hedge-fund company was planning to buy the company. Some analysts were blunt in their assessment that the cutbacks are designed […]
Popular Posts in 2018: 7 Easy Retention Wins
First published on October 17, 2018 My local mechanic has a sign over his workbench: “I can explain it to you, but I can’t make you understand it.” Visions of that sign popped up as I worked on The Top Five Barriers to Retention post. That’s when it occurred to me that there are many well-intentioned folks […]
5 Tips to Kill Stupid Ideas and Still Keep Your Job
Among the hackneyed phrases I most detest: “There are no bad ideas.” Sometimes the phrase is offered up at the start of “brainstorming” sessions, to encourage the shy. Sometimes it’s delivered to invisible eye-rolls and silent sighs by the chair of the board or a big donor. Civility and silence at any price. But, the […]
Give to Get: The Need for a New Acquisition Model
Mail list rental and exchange is diminishing in effectiveness. How can we tell? There’s the anecdotal: the number of people requesting no rental or exchange in feedback surveys is rising. And many charities are seeing their acquisition results wane. There’s the studied: researchers looked at people who get more charitable mail solicitations in a study […]
Taking our own medicine
We love feedback. We’ve talked about the levels of feedback: Using it to fix things for individuals Using it to fix your systems Using it to model your donors We’ve talked about how it makes people more likely to like you and how it’s an easy retention win. And we’ve talked about the most common […]
7 Easy Retention Wins
My local mechanic has a sign over his workbench: “I can explain it to you, but I can’t make you understand it.” Visions of that sign popped up as I worked on The Top Five Barriers to Retention post. That’s when it occurred to me that there are many well-intentioned folks who really don’t have the […]
Top Five Barriers to Retention
We fundraisers love lists. Most are of the “Top Five Steps to Success” variety. Frankly, I’ve always been more intrigued with the “Top Five Steps NOT to Take”. Just as someone who’s just learning to ride a bike wouldn’t attempt to mount it wearing a 40-pound backpack or peddle with flat tires, there are several […]
Fundraisers I Fear: Part 3- Those Who Guess About Donors
In Fundraisers I Fear Part 1 and Part 2 I noted that two of the great handicaps facing many fundraisers is their inability to seek and determine reality while safely snuggled in a cocoon of self-belief and their ignorance of basic facts. The Third Fear, to complete this trilogy of traits that scare the hell out of me, is […]
The Fundraisers I Fear
The fundraisers who scare me the most are the ones who are convinced they’re right. Why? Because these are the folks most unlikely to ever change. It is their blind adherence to conviction and convention that endangers the future of their organizations. Unwilling to challenge the status quo of their own efforts they’re most likely to […]