Picture your goal. The goal that is looming. If you’re like most folks, the date – not the goal itself – springs to mind! Write this date down. Say, “hello,” to your pivot point! The pivot point, generally speaking, is the point in the giving year where givers have concluded their giving decisions for […]
Don’t Just Fill Your Time, Maximize It!
Development Assistant Essentials Whether your ministry is introducing a Development Assistant, or expanding your program staff, there must be a clear and focused list of priorities. Work will expand or contract to fill the time available. Today I want to share four ways to streamline development assistant tasks to best benefit your efforts. Instant gratification. […]
Follow-Up Shows Follow-Through
Those who see movement in their ministry have figured out follow-up. The work in development is done in the Kingdom of God. People who see results that grow over time, see the fruit of their efforts, and see new resources being unlocked through people’s giving are active in advanced follow-up. Follow-up is not harassing. […]
90 Minutes of Change
I want to give you 90 minutes that are going to completely change the momentum in your giving year, particularly between now and the end of December. Not 90 minutes of watching me or listening to a webinar for an hour and a half… 90 minutes of action that will move you forward. Meetings are […]
Grow Giving This Year by Taking a Step Back
Reinforcing the Basics | Building Your Skillset If you are like me, you are thinking a lot about your goals for this year. Now is the perfect time to refocus on essentials while expanding on potential. Let’s talk about advancement planning and what it can do for your ministry! True advancement planning occurs when you’re […]
The Power of Ten
High Priority Prospects and What They Can Mean for Your Ministry I want to share a powerful method we’ve seen work again and again for leaders. I believe it will help you focus in the year as you look ahead to the next ten to twelve months. Focus on establishing a group of highest […]
How to Grow Long-Term Donors
Knowing the difference between when and how to emphasize gifts and commitments with potential donors is vital to the process of creating a sustained community of generous giving. To determine the development strategy you’re going to use, you must first understand the stages of a donor. Donor-focused perspective is key! The current outlook on fundraising […]
What You Absolutely Positively Must Do Before the End of December
The clock is ticking. The giving year is quickly coming to a close. Are you ready? Let’s review three simple, yet specific, steps you can take to maximize the potential for donor giving here at the end of the calendar year. Let’s get you setup and ready to roll in the NEXT calendar year! […]
How to raise more money by just saying thank you
How well are you thanking and reporting? Are you setting the standard in this important work? I want to challenge you to consider how you can grow giving by focusing first on better thanking and reporting to your donors. This is essential to growing your giving future! Here’s what the data tells us: If […]
Achieving Your Giving Goal in the Next 45 Days
This calendar year is coming to a close. Have you hit your giving goals? Creating a 45-day plan may be the push your project needs. Any purposeful gift is the result of intentional planning; it begins with God and flows from your faithful follow-through. By this point in the year, you have had a lot […]
Adjust Your Vista – The “Faith-spective” Approach to Raising Money
The right time to start raising money is never – so let’s start now! We firmly believe ministries and organizations must know where they want to go before planning how they will get there. It is our firm belief NOW is the time to take massive action. You can and will do all things […]
Four Ways You Can Do More With Less
The expectation placed upon both you and me in today’s economy is this: do more with less. To actually do more with less requires that you and I constantly reinvent ourselves and grow our own leadership capacity for our ministry organization. Here are four proven ways that I find always take me to the next […]
Leaders should be…
There’s a great deal of opinions out there about what leaders should be in their organizations. At the end of a really intense day of coaching with leaders around the country, I want to add something to this list that you may not have thought about before. Leaders should be…STORYTELLERS. I encourage you to keep […]
10 Ways to Simplify Your Work/Life
This piece was written by one of our amazing team members here at Development & Leadership Coaching, Erica Foster. Here she shares some practical and powerful gems shaped from years of working together and constantly streamlining systems so that we can focus on the most important things. She and I actually use all of […]
Train Well to Lead Well
Training your body is just as important in leadership than any other training you need to be successful. Are you training your body the way that you should? For my workout today, I have been moving a huge amount of rocks and soil that my wife has for working in the yard. I blocked an […]
Impossible Beauty
My youngest son, Nathan, just graduated high school. My wife and I have done a lot of reflecting on his years in school lately. There were hard moments for sure, but also some wonderful moments! One special one that I can recall was at his final orchestra concert in 8th grade. There were around 100 […]
How to switch from busy to effective
How do you flip the switch when you are overwhelmed and anxious with way too many things to do from being busy to being effective? I want to take you through a process that has helped me and many of the leaders we work with here at Development & Leadership Coaching. But first, you […]
Interview with Andy Andrews: The Little Things
It’s the little things that make all the difference. Andy Andrews is the author of the book The Little Things: Why You Really Should Sweat the Small Stuff. His perspective may go against culture in a lot of ways, but it makes so much sense. I enjoyed interviewing Andy and hearing why he became so passionate […]
7 Steps to Better Hiring in Ministry
Do you have the right people doing the right things in your ministry organization? Why is this so important anyway? One of my most favorite topics to talk with leaders about is how to have better hiring for ministry organizations. We have shared some basic steps over the years with leaders that have helped […]
The 100 Day Reset
Are you struggling to keep you and your team focused? You may need to hit the reset button. In fact, as leaders, data suggests that we should be hitting the reset button every 100 days. We have learned that it is very hard to sustain a group of people moving together and keep their focus, […]