Management References

Meetings that Work;  Meeting Poster;  Meeting Checklist

Why is it so hard to run a meeting correctly? Few organizations do. This presentation teaches how to conduct meetings that are productive. The accompanying checklist is a tool to help people remember the most important points in the presentation. The meeting poster is an organizational “conscience” to remind you whether your time is being spent valuably.

Meetings that Work.pps  Meeting Poster.pdf  Checklist.pdf

Drawing Meaning From Meetings: Visual Recording And Graphic Facilitation

Visual recording and graphic facilitation are techniques that make meetings more productive and result in more useful archival material. This white paper introduce these techniques and explains why they are so helpful.

Click here to download this white paper.

Creative Problem Solving for Your Organization

Creativity and innovation are skills we can teach and encourage among our staff. This highly interactive presentation is best delivered with a series of hands-on exercises. It explains many aspects of creativity and innovation, and demonstrates how nonprofit organizations can promote these attributes.

Web Site Creativity.pps

360-Degree Evaluations;  Leader Evaluation Form;  Leader Evaluation Scoring Spreadsheet

360-degree evaluations have been shown to provide more and better-quality information for performance feedback. These materials are designed for 360-degree evaluations of managers. The presentation addresses what it is and how to implement it. The Word file is a management evaluation form, and the spreadsheet is a scoring device.

360-Degree Evaluations.pps    CDRFGldrSurvey360.doc  

CDRFGldrSurvey360.xls

Leading from Below

Staff members often feel frustrated by leadership when they offer new ideas, and senior managers are often disappointed in what they see as a failure in their staff to take initiative. This presentation explains what leadership from below is all about, and makes suggestions to both managers and staff on how to make it happen.

LeadingFromBelow.pps

Making Change

Everyone recognizes that change is going on all around us; but this doesn’t make it any easier. This white paper explores why it is so hard to make changes within organizations. The author offers practical tips about how to make change happen. The paper concludes with a mini case history illustrating how changes were made within a county government advisory board.

Click here to download this white paper.

A Glossary For Planning

Strategic planning is probably the most talked about, and least understood, aspect of modern management.  Ask five managers to define the words mission, vision, strategy, and goals, and you’ll have five wildly different answers. Yet these five managers will carry on a conversation with these words and think they all understand each other. This white paper carefully defines critical planning terms and provides a framework for clear and consistent communications.

Click here to download this white paper.

Double Vision: Two Views of Success

An organization’s vision is its idea of what success will look like. Having a clear vision is important for an organization, because vision is the first step in strategic planning. Vision is not a simple concept to describe, however, because organizations need to succeed in many different ways and vision, therefore, must be multifaceted. Visions also should be considered in two dimensions: in-out and out-in. One dimension is how insiders suppose success will look to outsiders, and
the other is how outsiders would describe success to those on the inside. The out-in vision is harder to come up with, and one that is often omitted.

Click here to download this white paper.

Strategic Doing: Overcoming the Tactical Failures of Strategic Planning

It’s not enough just to have a retreat and write a yearly strategic plan. You have to execute against the plan and turn your ambitious ideas into successful outcomes. Many organizations today write wonderful plans, often with the help of consultants, only to be disappointed with their results at the end of the year. This white paper explains the essentials of organizational follow-through – how your organization can turn your plans into real achievements.

Click here to download this white paper.

Strategic Planning / Strategic Doing

At CDR Fundraising Group, we believe that strategic planning must be accompanied by strategic doing. Here are two presentations on this topic. The first is a brief, high-level explanation of the most important management principles of strategic planning and strategic doing. The second presentation is used for a half-day seminar, accompanied by many other handouts and supplementary materials. In it, you will learn details about how the basic elements of strategic planning and strategic doing can be used to bring success to your organization.

SPSDhilevel.pps SPSDweb.pps

A Native American Guide to Strategic Planning

The plains Indians were guided on their journey through life by a symbol called the medicine wheel. Using this wheel and other icons, young Indians embarked on vision quests to get insights into the directions they should take with their lives. In this article, we apply these Indian cultural icons and practices to help nonprofit organizations improve their strategic planning processes. In effect, the medicine wheel gives us a nonprofit version of the balanced scorecard.

wp_medicinewheel.pdf

Using a Balanced Scorecard in a Nonprofit Organization

Since its invention in the 1990s, the balanced scorecard has won acceptance as a management tool in the for-profit sector. Now, nonprofits are becoming familiar with, and trying to use, balanced scorecards. This white paper explains what balanced scorecards are and gives critically important tips about how to adapt them successfully into the nonprofit world.

Balanced Scorecard.pdf

Your Organization's Report Card

At the end of each year, organizations typically look back to assess how well they did over the previous year. This white paper presents an easy year-in-review exercise that can be tailored to most organizations. It will help you assess your yearly performance and organizational goals, and create a meaningful foundation for next year’s plan.

Organization Report Card.pdf

Marketing References

Our Efforts Count

Nancy Withbroe shares a unique story of a family's attempt to make good from a tragic situation and the fundraisers and program staff who understood how to help.

Our Efforts Count

Tips for Cold Calls

Screwing up your courage to make a cold call to a private grantmaker can be as hard for veterans as it is for new fundraisers. Here are some tips to help make your cold calls less frightening and more successful.

Tips for Cold Calls.doc

Tips for Cold Calls.pdf

Writing an Effective Grant Proposal

Foundations, corporations and government agencies are an important source of funds for many nonprofit organizations, and most funding sources like these award grants on the basis of proposals. This presentation gives tips on the art and science of writing a convincing proposal.

EffectiveGrantProposals.pps

The Nonprofit Branding Exercise;  The Brand Development Template

Many people write articles about branding, but few tell you how to do it. This presentation explains how to do a branding exercise (using the accompanying pdf template) for your nonprofit organization.

Branding.pps  BrandDevelopmentTemplate.pdf

A Primer on Nonprofit Marketing

If we understand marketing fundamentals, we understand why marketing in nonprofit organizations is more difficult than marketing in for-profit companies. This paper looks at the nature of nonprofit marketing and organizes it into four major dimensions.

Nonprofit Marketing Primer.pdf

Nonprofit Marketing 101

Marketing in nonprofits is different from marketing in commercial ventures. This presentation uses traditional commercial marketing concepts to explain why nonprofit marketing is different, and to suggest how nonprofit marketing can be done successfully.

NPmarketing101.pps

Marketing Matchmaker

This white paper explains the concept of “social branding” and the dynamics of creating social branding relationships between nonprofits and corporate sponsors. It uses marriage as an extended metaphor to explain how nonprofit-corporate partnerships are formed and maintained.

Match.pdf

Fundraising as a Strategic Decision

In many organizations, the approach to fundraising has become institutional and stale. Nonprofits need to make their fundraising plans an integral part of the strategic planning process. We present critical considerations for groups to analyze in making decisions about how to raise funds, including a six-category scheme of fundraising strategy activities.

Fundraising Strategic Decision.pdf

How to Start a Major Gifts Program from your Direct-Mail Donors

Some of the people who make small gifts to your organization through direct mail are capable of giving significantly more. This presentation will help you learn the differences between direct mail and major gifts fundraising, how to determine which of your direct mail donors are the best prospects for major gifts and how to cultivate and deepen their interest in your organization and the issues you address. The slides cover wealth screening and other research tools, strategies for involving donors and how to solicit your first major gifts.

Major Gifts.pps

Congressional Testimony -- Geoffrey W. Peters

The attached testimony was given by Geoffrey W. Peters, Esq., President and CEO of CDR Fundraising Group, to the United States House of Representatives’ Committee on Oversight and Government Reform in January 2008.  Mr. Peters provides information on the challenges faced when “watchdog” groups attempt to calculate fundraising costs as a proportion of a charity’s overall income or total expenditures, and argues for evaluating charity effectiveness by other means.  The testimony includes an extensive annotated list of scholarly, legal and industry studies and reports on this complex issue.

Statement of Geoffrey W. Peters