Too often nonprofits can’t see the money sitting right there in front of them because they’re looking through a lens of SCARCITY.

Scarcity is so powerful it will . . .

I coached a senior level Development Director who was that classic, “I shake hands and kiss babies” guy. 

Moving from event to event to event all year long, his team was exhausted with the transactional tactics and the organization struggled to diversify and grow charitable revenue.

If your FY ends on June 30th…are you:

A.) Pushing uphill in an effort to land every gift by 6/30? 

Or….are you:

B.) Fully funded and confidently pivoting donor conversations until after 7/1?

Too many people reach out and ask…how can I get more money from individual major donors?

Let’s flip that and ask the opposite question…

Why do most organizations stay small and never reach financial sustainability?

You don’t need to buy a wealth screening software for your staff to be able to FIND major donors.

But you DO need to start doing the things that ATTRACT major donors to self-identify themselves.

My unpopular opinion: You don’t need a long narrative-based Fundraising Plan to raise money.

My clients? They use a Financing Plan.

90% of RAISING to budget every year is about SPENDING money on the right things.

If you’re NOT consistently spending on the resources you need to reach or exceed your budget every year, it’s likely you’re NOT growing at the pace you’d like.

A prospective client came to me last year unsure if I’d be able to help them…afterall, they felt the competition for dollars in their mid-sized city was fierce…

Too many fundraisers use “the stock market” as an excuse NOT to ask donors for money. “We can’t ask in this economy!” . . .

Well…Let’s look at that from another perspective. 

When I started my business 13 years ago I would have never guessed I’d spend so much time on….

👉 Drafting emails that donors actually respond to. 

What are the nonprofit leaders doing whose orgs scale at a higher rate doing differently? . . .

I've witnessed a few distinct themes in the 13 years of my biz. These themes separate those orgs that were aggressively scaling vs. moderately growing. 

A funny conversation I have every few months . . .

(For context, I serve orgs all over the country but I run my biz out of Chicagoland.)

“Sherry, our board wants us to work with ‘a local consultant’ who knows the donors in our market”. Followed by . . .

I’m not usually in the business of telling nonprofit leaders to read a restaurant book. And yet that's what I've done in this month's Philanthropy.org article!