Expertise and Dedication Around the World

Jennie Thompson, board member of the Resource Alliance, was a guest of AFP at our recent Leadership Academy in Montreal. Jennie told me during the Academy she had seldom encountered such an extraordinarily dedicated group of individuals from such a wide range of backgrounds—international nonprofits, large institutions and grassroots organizations—people coming from all over North America, as well as Latin America, Europe and South East Asia.

I value that comment very highly, coming from a leader of an organization that has worked with charities from around the world for many years. It’s a distinguishing feature of both organisations.

Andrea McManus and I had the privilege of being guests of the Resource Alliance at its International Fundraising Congress (IFC) in late October. It had been some years since I attended IFC, and it was an extraordinarily valuable experience—so many participants from so many backgrounds, coming together to learn from one another. As always, the breadth and depth of knowledge was incredible, and the increasing numbers of younger delegates adding an enthusiasm and drive that was compelling.

Both experiences drive home a key point: fundraising expertise is found all over the world. North American expertise is recognized and valued, but there are amazing and ground-breaking campaigns and innovations happening all over the world from which we are increasingly drawing inspiration and benefit. Our international connections make the entire profession stronger by bringing together the best ideas that are happening in every corner of the globe.

National Philanthropy Day®

I’ve had the opportunity to celebrate National Philanthropy Day® (NPD) with many of you this year.

I’ve never left any NPD celebration without feeling inspired by the stories I’ve heard, the people I’ve met and the feeling of fellowship and community as the philanthropic sector comes together. We reenergize ourselves and our organizations, and remind the public why philanthropy is so critical to our society.

But this year, NPD takes on even more importance.

Very few of us have experienced a more volatile economic climate than this one. At the same time, governments around the world are about to impose the most severe cuts in funding we have seen in a generation. Cuts that will impact all of our lives and the lives of those we serve.

As government pulls back, demand for our services will grow exponentially. There has never been a time when the commitment of all of us has been more critical. Individually, each of us is a change-agent; collectively, we’re a movement for change.

NPD reminds us of what we can achieve together. Because it will be up to us, together, to ensure that the needs of our communities and our society are met for now and into the future.

Communicating Across the Miles

I just spent a great two days in the Bay area, attending the Golden Gate Chapter’s National Philanthropy Day celebration and holding a couple of very informative town hall meetings with that chapter, as well as the California Capital and Yosemite chapters.

Andrea McManus and I have met many chapters this year through these town hall meetings. It’s helped us understand your environment, the challenges and opportunities you face, far better. It’s also helped us focus our plans to serve you.

One of the big themes that has come out of these meetings, nearly everywhere we’ve gone, is how chapters want—and need—to be talking with each other more. We’re missing out on great opportunities when chapters in close proximity to each other are not talking with each other on a regular basis.

But it’s more than just geography. A lot of the larger chapters I’ve visited want to speak with chapters their own size about various issues. And I’m hearing that membership chairs or education chairs want to stay in better contact with each other.

We have Like-Sized Chapter Meetings at our International Conference and Leadership Academy, but it’s clear those opportunities are not enough. We’ll be working at AFP IHQ to develop some models on how we can keep chapters and chapter leaders better connected. In the meantime, let me know how we can help develop and nurture chapter connections!

Bill Drayton and the Next Generation

I had the great privilege of joining a conversation between Bill Drayton, founder of Ashoka, and the 2011 NGen Fellows of Independent Sector yesterday.

I won't walk you through the details, but there was a thread running through the conversation which we all need to hear.

Ashoka is about change. All of us have to develop the skills needed to adapt to evolutionary change on an ongoing basis. If we don't, we become irrelevant in this world.

All of us have the capacity to be change agents, to be entrepreneurs. Nowhere is this more essential than in our community of fundraisers.

We can choose to learn and adapt, to adopt the global community of fundraisers as our community, and in doing so evolve and change. But to do that we need two qualities: empathy, an understanding and sympathy for others that recognizes the many different routes to success, and humility, a recognition that our way is not the only, nor even the right, way to achieve change.

For many of us this is a hard lesson to learn. For the next generation of fundraisers it's instinctive—hardwired into their systems. Let's have the humility to learn from them.

If you haven't already, check out the Ashoka website and get to know Bill Drayton. When you have, you'll wish you'd done it many years ago.