Tom and I were together this week (a rare event with our respective travel schedules) and we were talking about how the training, the frameworks, the work we’re doing in the field to transform organizations is all principle-based. We’ve literally tested and refined this with over 5000 organizations of all sizes from all over the world.
With that in mind, it’s worth revisiting some of the GUIDING PRINCIPLES.
At the highest level – we can summarize the transformation we’re driving and they key to funding results with this perspective:
IMPACT DRIVES INCOME
It’s all about your impact. It’s not about asking for money. It’s about being believing, emoting, communicating how it is that you’re going to change lives, save lives and impact lives. When you do that – it’s a game changer. (Almost) everyone wants to have an impact and (almost) no one likes asking for money. Thinking in terms of the impact means:
- It makes no sense to cultivate someone for six visits before asking. As Mike, a client on the west coast noted, “This mindset allows you to be so much more direct!”
- We would rethink nearly all of our funding activities. People don’t give to special events or to the annual fund. They give to programs, patients, students, etc.
- You can’t screw up an ask if you’re authentic (simply an intermediary to change/save lives) and you let the funding rationale drive the ask.
From this, we then offer some guiding principles. As principles, they’re applicable to EVERY organization reading this.
- Be For Impact.
- Change Your Vocabulary.
- Think Big.
- Build Simple.
- Act Now. (together 3-5 make up the Entrepreneurial Mantra)
- Focus on Relationships.
- Do the Math.
- Commit to Sales.
- Just Ask.
-Nick
