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

What Is Leadership?

Chapter 3 described the first relationship that contributes to effective fund development: the relationship within your organization—creating the infrastructure that produces a healthy organization. I proposed eight key components of this relationship within your organization: shared values, commitment to process, learning organization, ongoing conversation, participatory decision-making, well-managed change, and culture of philanthropy and the art of leadership.

In this third edition of Strategic Fund Development, I devote an entire chapter to the exploration of leadership. Nonetheless, this is by no means a definitive description. Learning more about leadership is, I think, a joy and requirement of any professional, whether for-profit or nonprofit/nongovernmental organization (NGO).

Leadership is a critical component of effective infrastructure and your organization’s internal relations. Effective and efficient fundraisers are good leaders. They lead the fund development function, and they lead organizational development. In fact, as I noted in Chapter 4, “The Fund Development Professional,” I expect fundraisers to be leadership leaders.

Leadership guarantees that your institution develops the four relationships central to an effective organization and critical to productive fund development. Leaders facilitate the ongoing process to develop, sustain, and renew these relationships.

What is the leadership issue of our time? How can we create sustained solutions ...