Channeling a Business Guru for Fundraising Ideas (part 2 of a series)

Channeling a Business Guru for Fundraising Ideas (part 2 of a series)

By Tom Wilson Major Gifts Guru

On Jim Collins from The New York Times article: “He approaches every aspect of his life with purpose and intensity. He wants to produce a lasting and distinctive body of work. He’s practiced saying ‘no.’ While he commands a speaking fee of $65,000, he limits himself to 18 a year with 1/3 of those pro bono for nonprofit organizations. He generally declines to do consulting work, but occasionally he will consult for a fee of $60,000 for two half days. And, no book tours.”

Here’s an interesting side with implications for fundraising – “no splurging. He and his wife live in a 2,500 sq. ft. house in Boulder that they bought 14 years ago. He keeps his overhead low.”

Look for indications like this when you approach donors, how they run their business and life says a lot about their attitudes toward money and how they should be approached for a major gift.

Peter F. Drucker, one of his mentors, gave have him this advice: “Do you want to build ideas first and foremost? Then you must not build a big organization, because then you will end up managing that organization.” So, Collins just hires a flexible crew of university students to help him project by project.

Here are ways that Mr. Collins looks for talent – some of his ideas may help us as we look for new people to bring into major gift fundraising.

"For each book project, he hires a team of about a dozen university students to help him. He prefers to learn as much as he can about them before he meets them. ‘Because if I meet them, I may like them, and then all the assessment of the person is going to be filtered by the fact I like them. I really want to see the quality of their work. I need people who that just weird need to get everything right.’ He’s interested in 4 intangibles: smart, curious, willing to death march (‘they will just die before they would fail to complete something to perfection’) and some spark of irreverence (‘it’s in that fertile conversation of disagreement where the best ideas come’).”

This article was the second of a series. For articles 1 and 3, see below

• Channeling a Business Guru for Fundraising Ideas
• Channeling a Business Guru for Fundraising Ideas (part 3 of a series)

Permanent Link: Channeling a Business Guru for Fundraising Ideas (part 2 of a series)

http://majorgiftsguru.com/2009/06/channeling-business-guru-for_16.html