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

Summary

If you want to raise more money for your organization, first strengthen your organization’s internal relationship. This relationship relies on an effective infrastructure that produces a healthy corporate culture and sound systems.

Traditionally, organizations develop an infrastructure with such components as planning and assessment, marketing and communications, human resources, business management and governance, financing, and quality assurance/continuous quality improvement.

Effective organizations add eight more components to develop their internal relationship and move strongly into the future: shared values, art of leadership, commitment to process, learning organization, ongoing conversation, participatory decision-making, well-managed change, and culture of philanthropy.

First, these organizations articulate shared values and operate accordingly. Second, these effective organizations recruit and develop leaders who possess specific attitudes and skills and perform certain functions. Third, committed to process, the most effective organizations turn themselves into learning organizations, the fourth component. These organizations know that operating as a learning organization may well be the most critical attribute for survival.

Fifth and sixth, these organizations stimulate ongoing conversation and participatory decision-making, both essential to learning organizations. Well-managed change is the seventh component that effective organizations use to strengthen ...