Focused Fundraising

Maintain your focus, your productivity, and your sanity in the contemporary fundraising environment

In Focused Fundraising: How to Raise Your Sights and Overcome Overload, accomplished nonprofit management strategists and leaders Christopher Cannon and Michael Felberbaum deliver a must-read combination of the latest mindfulness techniques and operational strategies that will equip you to succeed in an increasingly chaotic, noisy, and confusing fundraising environment. You’ll find concrete strategies to navigate the challenges of modern fundraising, including technology changes, scarce resources, and shifting donor expectations.

In the book, you’ll also find:

• Hands-on skills for sharpening your focus while those around you are giving in to endless distractions
• An insightful combination of big-picture views and micro-considerations that offer a practical roadmap to set and stick with your priorities
• Practical applications of tried and true mindfulness and nonprofit strategy research that you can implement immediately in your organization

An essential, desk-side resource for nonprofit board members, managers, leaders, and team members, Focused Fundraising is a one-of-a-kind toolbox designed to help you tackle the challenges you face every day.

Welcome to Focused Fundraising: How to RAISE Your Sights and Overcome Overload vii

Part I The Challenges of Focused Fundraising 1

Chapter 1 The Constant Craziness of Nonprofit Life 3

Chapter 2 Focus Begins by Valuing the Work 7

Chapter 3 You Can Focus Because You Are Mindful 15

Chapter 4 The Tech Tug and Instant Overload 19

Chapter 5 Why Instant Overload Is Here to Stay: The 4 Ms 27

Chapter 6 This Is Not the Focus You’re Looking For 37

Part II Focus- First: the Raise Framework 53

Chapter 7 How RAISE Helps 55

Chapter 8 Recognize Your Point of View 63

Chapter 9 Assess Your Standards 69

Chapter 10 Inspire Your Efforts 81

Chapter 11 Structure Your Work 93

Chapter 12 Evolve Your Approach 107

Part III Focused Fundraising Teams 115

Chapter 13 The Importance of Culture 117

Chapter 14 Prospect Development 125

Chapter 15 Engagement Strategies 135

Chapter 16 Fundraising Operations 139

Chapter 17 Strategic Information Management 151

Chapter 18 The Power of Maturity Models 159

Chapter 19 Focused Fundraising Maturity Model 167

Chapter 20 Further Thoughts on Thought Work 175

Chapter 21 Causativity 189

Conclusion 193

Toolkit: RAISE: Practical Examples and Coaching Prompts 199

Bibliography 213

Acknowledgments 217

Index 219

CHRISTOPHER M. CANNON is the President of Management Consulting at Zuri Group, where he advises many of the world’s top nonprofits and oversees projects for clients who raise billions of dollars each year. He is the author of An Executive’s Guide to Fundraising Operations.

MICHAEL FELBERBAUM is the leader of Yale University’s Advancement Systems and the co-founder of Causativity.org. Michael is a long-time mindfulness meditation practitioner and teacher. He also serves as a Board Member of New Haven’s Solar Youth.

Nonprofit fundraising plays a critical role in the social fabric. Healthcare, Education, and so many other sectors depend on fundraising for continuity and growth. But the overload from today’s always on, always connected world, threaten even the most focused fundraising teams and individuals.

In Focused Fundraising: How to Raise Your Sights and Overcome Overload, a team of distinguished nonprofit leaders delivers a startlingly insightful and necessary instruction manual in how to retain and sharpen your focus when everyone around you is giving in to the endless distractions foisted on us by the modern world. In the book, you’ll find robust combinations of mindfulness and science, organizational wisdom and individual advice, and big-picture views and micro-considerations that dovetail to provide a highly practical and compact resource for nonprofit fundraising professionals and volunteers.

The authors show you how to successfully fight back against the volume, pace, and complexity of the contemporary business environment and learn to separate the necessary from the near. You’ll explore concrete strategies for learning to distinguish between a true emergency and issues that are merely noisy and close, maintaining your focus and mindfulness with the effective techniques discussed within.

A can’t-miss resource for nonprofit managers, and fundraising professionals and volunteers seeking relief from the constant distraction and noise created by the contemporary organization, Focused Fundraising will also earn a place on the bookshelves of any business or nonprofit leader who wants to combine powerful mindfulness tactics with effective organizational operational strategies.

Maintain your focus on what truly matters as you find the Zen of fundraising

Focused Fundraising: How to Raise Your Sights and Overcome Overload is an essential combination of evidence-based mindfulness techniques and powerful operational strategies to thrive in a hybrid/remote fundraising world. The book positions nonprofit managers, leaders, and team members to succeed despite a growing deluge of distraction and noise in the contemporary fundraising environment.

A first-of-its-kind compilation of individual mindfulness tactics and operational strategies, Focused Fundraising is the tool you’ve been waiting for to help you create an environment in which your fundraising efforts can flourish and succeed.

“This book tackles a topic—instant overload due to too much to do, too many distractions, and too little time—that is affecting everyone. Focusing on the important over the urgent is not always easy and Michael and Chris present tactics and some big-picture thinking that help fundraisers and the nonprofit sector. This book is full of strategies that I can use with my team.”

— Theresa A. Pesch, President and VP of Philanthropy, Hennepin Healthcare Foundation

“Focused Fundraising provides advancement professionals with tips and tricks that can help cut through the noise. Chris and Michael present step-by-step guides to deal with the daily grind and help you target what matters most.”

— Donald J. Whelan, Jr., Vice Chancellor for University Advancement, Texas Christian University

“Nonprofit work and fundraising requires daily inspiration so you can stay focused on what really matters, be resilient in the face of setbacks, and steadily move your vision and goals forward. With this book in hand, you’ve got a key resource to keep you motivated and on track.”

— Allison A. Holzer, Co-Author of Dare to Inspire: Sustain the Fire of Inspiration in Work and Life, Master Certified Coach and co-CEO of InspireCorps