Prioritize stewardship, invest in capacity, energize operating appeals

Published in Issue 4 – 2009 of the Alliance for Children & Families Magazine

View or print column as a PDF

These are daunting times for most child and family service providers. My agency, like many others, has had significant revenue reductions that may result in program or staff retrenchments.

It is too easy to allow ourselves and our agencies to be defined by these cuts, shortfalls, and the sense of resource depletion. Yet, hope and positive energy remain the lifeblood of our agencies and are critical to ultimate success.

Managing the mood, mitigating the fear, and providing a positive vision of tomorrow is essential to sustain and nurture the morale of the staff and volunteers who make mission a reality.

Board members and executive officers alike tend to recoil at the thought of strategic planning. Sure, everyone votes to make a plan. No one relishes living the process.

Enter the challenge posed to me by the organizers of a fall conference for not-for-profit board and staff development.  The theme is using “Appreciative Inquiry” methodology -- so can I fit a strategic planning for fund raising seminar into that model?  “Sure,” I bravely said.

Strategies to Achieve Social Impact

The TCC Group announced the results of an analysis of the factors that predict sustainability for approximately 700 nonprofit organizations that were surveyed using its Core Capacity Assessment Tool (CCAT). The CCAT is an online survey taken by an organization’s senior staff and board members to assess an organization’s leadership, management, adaptive, and technical capacities, strengths, and challenges. The Sustainability Formula a new paper by TCC Group Senior Vice President and Director of Research, Peter York, highlights the factors that predict a nonprofit’s sustainability. “Sustainability is not just about fundraising,” says York, “but strong, motivational, and vision-centered leadership combined with financial adaptability, effective learning practices, and good sense.” York discusses The Sustainability Formula in his recent podcast produced by The Foundation Center. 

The Alliance’s RDS program has been in existence for more than a decade. Begun in 1998 with a planning grant from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the RDI program (or “Resource Development Initiative,” as it was called at the time) was organized by a volunteer committee of agency CEOs and fundraising staff plus professionals from the development field who recognized and understood the need for nonprofit child- and family-serving agencies to become more sophisticated in their fund development efforts.

How to Start a Conversation on Planned Giving: From Apples to Apple Trees

The teleconference in February was a huge success.  Even if you missed it, you can still listen to it.  View the description below and how to download the recording.

The RDS Advisory Committee will hold three free teleconference calls in 2009.  Our first teleconference, How to Start a Conversation on Planned Giving: From Apples to Apple Trees was very popular.  Two more teleconferences - Elements of Grant Writing and The Importance of Subsidizing your Business: Philanthropy -  will be held this year.

Check this website regularly for more details on these conferences.  Also look for information in the Alliance E-News.  If you have any questions about RDS teleconferences contact Susan Skibba, development associate.

Since 2003, Alliance for Children & Families Magazine columnist Bob Jones has shared his approach to effective fund development practices with the readers of the Alliance's quarterly magazine. Those columns are now available to all development staff visiting this website. 

Jones, pictured right, is president and CEO of Children's Aid and Family Services, Paramus, New Jersey, and a member of the Alliance's board of directors. He is also the chair of the RDS advsiory committee, a group of development professionals composed of both Alliance and non-Alliance members. Information on the commitee and its purpose, plus a list of the advisory commitee members is available on this site.