Strategic Fund Development: Building Profitable Relationships That Last, Third Edition

Summary

Your organization’s survival and its success depend on four critical relationships: your internal relations, your relationship with the community, your relationship with your constituents, and your relationship with volunteers. Build these well, and you’ll flourish. Ignore these relationships—even a little bit—and you’ll struggle.

That’s the bottom line: Develop the four relationships!

With these four in hand, you’ve pretty much got all you need. Then “just do it,” as Nike says. But without these four relationships, fund development is neither effective nor productive over the long term. Then your organization will go slowly out of business.

More importantly, without these four relationships, your organization itself is neither effective nor productive over the long term. Then your organization should go out of business—and quickly! This is really hard work. Sometimes not as hard as you think. And sometimes harder than you think.

Actually raising money is the smallest part. First—and always—everything else has to work well. Start now.