2 min read
What Makes a Great Donor Tour
If your organization performs any of its mission-driven work at your facility, then you should be using donor tours as a potential touchpoint in your plans. At Veritus, we often talk about taking the...
Passionate Giving BlogTM
2 min read
What No One Tells You About Imposter Syndrome in Fundraising
There’s a feeling almost every major gift officer has at some point, but hardly anyone talks about it honestly. You sit in a donor meeting wondering if you’re asking the right questions. You stare at...
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3 min read
Why Non-Profit Fundraiser Burnout Is a Leadership Problem — Not a People Problem
Last month at AFP ICON in San Diego, I sat in on a session with young, emerging fundraisers, many of them only a year or two into their careers, and I walked away feeling unsettled.
2 min read
One Question to Unlock a Donor Conversation
A while back, I was scrolling through Apple News on my phone, and a headline from People Magazine caught my eye: “Carl Reiner's One Simple Question to 'Dick Van Dyke Show' Writers Changed the Way...
2 min read
Talking to Strangers (Or Donors You Don’t Know Yet)
Do you find that first conversation with a donor you haven’t met to be a bit, well, scary? I don’t mean shaking in your boots terrified. But enough that you have to inhale-exhale before you start...
2 min read
Don’t Ask Your Donors ‘How Are You?’
How many times has someone asked “How are you?” in greeting? How often was there any real interest in your answer? Now, I realize that there may be some caveats to that, especially for southerners...
3 min read
Are You Still Talking When Your Donor is Done Listening?
Talking is a big part of what a relationship fundraiser does. I wrote about that recently in a blog that focused on ensuring your “conversations” are not effectively serial monologues. I’m going to...
3 min read
How to Use Your Equivalency Language
In the first part of this blog series, I shared with you the importance of creating equivalency language and how to create it for your organization. That’s the hard part.
2 min read
How to Create Equivalency Language
If you go to the Feeding America website right now, the very first thing you will see is $1 = 20 meals. It’s simple and effective. The organization is showing you the actual impact of every dollar...
2 min read
Learning How to Think Before Applying AI Tools
As a Veritus coach, it seems like leadership and fundraisers are obsessed with speed. How can we make the research go faster? How can we get the data faster? How can I find information faster? This...
2 min read
Are You Talking Too Much During Donor Conversations?
I was reviewing some of my go-to coaching resources recently and came across a great article from the Harvard Business Review on talking too much. The author refers to career coach Marty Nemko’s...
2 min read
The Top 5 Qualities a Development Director Must Have to be Successful
Do you have what it takes to be a great Director of Development? For a long time at Veritus, we’ve said one of the toughest jobs in fundraising is being a front-line fundraiser. And I still believe...
