Identity and Blackness in Prospect Development

You may know Joan Ogwumike as the author for the past four years of the blog, A Researcher’s Diary, but she is also the writer of the Apra-Illinois blog as well as Prospect Research Associate at the Obama Foundation. Although small in number, Black prospect development professionals deserve an opportunity to share experiences and knowledge pertaining to diversity, inclusion […]

Nonprofits are the engines of change

Nonprofits operate in an increasingly volatile world — and a rapidly evolving digital landscape. This was true before the pandemic and even more so now. According to a 2020 nonprofit trends report, the demand for more nonprofit programs and services is rising. So what can non-profits do now to be successful? Vala Afshar looks for […]

A pinch of fairy dust and a touch of realism!

One of the most troubling facts about our industry is that the average time Development Directors stay in their roles is only 18 months! On average, a major gift takes two years to move from identification and qualification to solicitation and closure. Major Gift Officers generally require three years of activity before an optimal return […]

10 Ways Your Brain Reacts to Uncertain Times

Volatility. Uncertainty. Complexity. Ambiguity. These four words (shorthanded to “VUCA”) describe the type of high-stress, high-demand scenarios that can rapidly degrade one of our most powerful and influential brain systems: our attention. Right now, during the COVID pandemic, we are all living in VUCA conditions. Compounding the constant health and economic concerns, we are facing […]

A Mental Trick to Help with Challenging Conversations

Imagine the colleague with whom you have a very challenging relationship, the person who makes the most innocuous conversation tense and uncomfortable. Now imagine the following scenario: You’re sitting at your desk working away when a message from that person pops up on your screen. You open the message and it reads: “I got the […]

Five For-Profit Practices That Philanthropy Should Avoid

Judy Park, Kavya Shankar and a group of Stanford MBA students interviewed millennial donors from the Silicon Valley startup world and these conservations showed a pattern of overreliance on certain for-profit principles in the nonprofit realm, despite potential flaws. One young tech executive in San Francisco said she wanted to maximize return on investment. The […]

The permission to ask ask

A few years ago, I had the pleasure of working with Tess Nixon Spiller. She wrote this blog at the time and when I first read it, it felt to me she was a magician who had just lifted the lid on their most successful magic trick. It just blew me away… “so that is […]

How to come up with more brilliant ideas

In this article, Richard Branson sits down and chats to Adam Grant, author of the book Originals. Originals is all about how we can become more successful in championing our best ideas. While a great idea is a great start, Adam says it’s what you do next that really counts. How can we all recognise […]

Making the business case for a chief data officer

The right CDO can help firms reap the benefits of data-informed decision-making. Companies are doing more than paying lip service to data-driven decision-making these days; many have added a chief data officer to their already crowded executive ranks. But the question remains whether this once obscure position can deliver enough business value to justify its […]

Data Governance: 5 Best Practices for Data Governance

The number of connected devices has expanded rapidly in recent years, as mobile phones, telematics devices, IoT sensors, and more have gained widespread adoption. At the same time, big data analytics has come of age. The deluge of new data has combined with an increased need for analyzing and exploiting that information to create an […]