Issue No. 22 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting is about decision-making. Andy Stanley names one of the worst questions ever asked: “Is there anything wrong with it?” Read his book and check out the donor letter idea in this week’s bucket.
I’m often asked, “What’s the best book you’ve read in the last year?” Some leaders are looking for a gift book to send to donors. Others are being intentional about people development and want to bless their team members and board members. Sometimes I meet a serious life-long learner. Leaders are readers.
This week’s book gets my five-star rating. I missed the publisher’s hype when Andy Stanley’s book was published in 2004, but my good friend, Dick Towner, recently encouraged me to read it. (Dick is the passionate leader of the Good $ense Stewardship Movement for Willow Creek Association.) I bought the book and my wife, Joanne, read it.
Joanne agreed with Dick and when those two gang up on me, I just salute and do what they say. I read and savored it. Stanley’s work is a VERY important book. Warning! You can’t buy just one. We named it the “Book-of-the-Year” for our clients and bought a case. You’ll think of a dozen colleagues, family members and friends that should read the book. So order it today: The Best Question Ever: A Revolutionary Approach to Decision Making.
So what is the question? Buy the book.The quick answer won’t serve you well.
Your Weekly Staff Meeting Questions:
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1. After you share this book with your staff, ask for reports on how it has changed their decision-making approach to family, money, relationships and work.
2. What’s the best book you’ve read (or listened to) in the last 12 months?
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Insights from the Management Buckets Workshop Experience
Here’s an honest donor letter I’d like to receive some day:
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Dear Friend,
We know you’ve never sent even one dollar to our ministry, but we’ve continued to send you our monthly donor letter for the last 10 years because we’re lazy and we’ve never segmented our mailing list.
Blessings,
John Doe
P.S. Please recycle.
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Yikes! “One size fits all” is a very expensive and ineffective donor strategy. Your ministry is reaching out to new donors, thanking current donors, and wondering why your list of former donors is growing so rapidly.
Yet, if you’re like many Christian organizations, you might still be sending the same monthly donor letter to every segment: non-donors, small donors, major donors, lapsed donors—and even angry “I’ll-never-give-again” donors. The trash can is the only place where one size fits all.
In our Management Buckets Workshop Experience, we counsel you on Simplified Segmenting and help you save on mailing costs, while increasing your revenue. The Donor Bucket is one of 20 Critical Competencies Required for Leading and Managing Today’s Nonprofit Organization. Email me for the 2007 workshop dates.
Your Weekly Staff Meeting Questions:
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1. Does the 80/20 Rule apply to our donor (or customer) base with 80 percent of our gifts coming from 20 percent of our donors? How do we steward this 20 percent more thoughtfully?
2. What should we do in the next 30 days to more effectively segment our donor list?
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