Fundraising the SMART Way: Predictable, Consistent Income Growth for Your Charity, + Website

Part IIIImplementing Fundraising the Smart Way

The fundraising revolution relies on leadership. It requires strong, thoughtful, consistent leadership to implement Fundraising the SMART Way™. Remember, the SMART Way is not the latest, greatest set of cool tricks and campaign tactics; it's a way to manage the business of the fundraising department for continuous improvement. If you expect your development officers to adopt this new approach but don't change your leadership skills or style, things are likely to get worse, not better. You will have heightened your team's expectations but then failed to deliver on the implied promise.

Guess what that causes? Disaffection, distress, cynicism, and eventually distrust of you as the manager or leader. Don't go there.

In Part III, we discuss what it takes to translate Fundraising the SMART Way from theory to practice, turning it into your team's business-as-usual, and “the way we do things around here.” To accomplish this transition requires the ability to capture data on the key performance indicators we've identified, the technology to report on them easily, and the leadership skills and talents to guide the staff to better performance.

There are many hidden challenges on the road to the future, starting with human nature. If your development officers have done things a certain way for a period of time, it's difficult to change those habits—even if you all agree with the needed change. This is where good, informed leadership, management, ...