Fulfilling The Mission Starts With How You Execute Each One Of These

The sound of the TV was playing in the background one weekend morning while I was making some food in the kitchen.

The local news was on, and I heard the anchor guy interviewing someone from a charity that was hosting an event that afternoon.

At the end of the conversation, the anchor said, “Come on out, everyone, and let’s do some GOOD!”

Tell me – what happens when people arrive at your fundraising event, and there aren’t anywhere near enough volunteers to facilitate “doing some good”? (This happens all the time)

It’s convenient to blame post-pandemic apathy, isn’t it?

But what if this failure of not enough volunteers was the result of a string of decisions that came before it?

For example…

The decision made by the Staff person responsible for recruiting volunteers to abruptly quit her job and leave.

And the decision before that to reduce Staff pay to $17 an hour when the living wage in that area is $20.

And the decision before that when the loudest and most feared voice in the Boardroom demanded a fundraising event on an insanely short timeline.

And the decision before that to cut the part of the budget reserved for marketing in half.

And the decision before that to chop up the budget for the third time this year.

Is it becoming clearer?

So yes – you can gaze out into the community and find anecdotal evidence for how their behavior is causing both your public fundraising events to fail, and your pervasive money shortfall.

Or you can have a look at when “doing some good” (fulfilling the Mission) went out of existence for you.

Hint: It started when you executed the first decision to play smaller.

Sheree Allison, CFRE