About this event
This event is provided by WVDO
Listening the Gift: Creating Transformation for You, Your Organization and
Your Donor
The organizations we serve as professional fundraisers transform our world.
We house the homeless, feed the hungry, cure cancer, educate, support, and
weave the cultural fabric of our communities. As development professionals
we are fortunate to have a front-row seat to this inspirational work.
Our donors are with us because they want to play a role in this community
transformation. They have precious, hard-earned gifts to give, and it is our
job to be their guide, helping them see how they can participate in richly
meaningful ways.
But all too often the pressures of our daily work, deadlines, budget
constraints and more get in the way of creating and maintaining an
environment that fosters transformation, and instead we fall back on
“transactions.”
In this highly interactive session you will learn and practice ways to
“Listen the Gift”, rather than “Ask for the Gift”, leading to deep,
sustainable relationships with your donors and larger contributions for your
organization. We will move from transactional development work to
transformational relationship building.
Along the way we explore some of the long-standing biases, beliefs and habits
that threaten to pull us back into “asking” and away from
“inspiring.” Let’s face it, in a small shop with staff wearing
multiple hats, with big deadlines looming and budgets to fill, it can be
challenging to stay above the fray and create an inspirational space. We
will explore with each other new strategies that will help us keep the joy in
the daily work and inspire our donors to join us.
Presenter:
Catherine Crooker has been creating transformation for Portland-area
non-profits since 1985. Catherine approaches every client, and every donor,
with a fresh perspective and appreciation for each organization’s own
unique challenges and opportunities. This, coupled with years of experience
and a strategic mind for addressing the real issues, leads to the kind of
change that truly does make a difference—not for a season. Not for a year.
But for the life of the organization and its cause.