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Monday Matters: Back on the Ground

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If last week was about reaching new heights, this weekend was about coming back down to earth. “Crashing” might be an overstatement, but there’s something clarifying about realizing that while the view from the top might have been magnificent, a lot of work still waits for us on the ground. And sometimes, that work involves spreadsheets, mail merges, proofreading, and roughly 60 pages of website copy. That was my weekend. One of the projects taking up my time was putting the finishing touches on letters to donors and potential supporters of the Bach Choir of Pittsburgh , where I chair the Development Committee. The letters are part of our annual drive, and getting them ready meant doing the decidedly unglamorous work behind a fundraising campaign: compiling and cleaning spreadsheets for a mail merge, checking names and addresses, and then meticulously reviewing every single letter before sending the batch to the printer. Nobody puts “reviewed 75 mail-merged fundraising letters” on an i...
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Funding Friday: The View from the Top

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Last week, I mentioned that I was going to do something that genuinely frightened me. I was going up on a rooftop, and I'm not mildly uncomfortable with heights. I am terrified of them. So, naturally, before the event, I Googled the location. I looked at photographs of the rooftop, studied the building, and tried to figure out exactly what I was getting myself into. This may not have been the best thing I could have done for my nerves, because now I had photographic evidence of exactly how high up I was going to be. Still, I wanted to know what I was walking into. In other words, I did my homework. That’s a fundraising lesson. Before you walk into a fundraiser, meeting, networking event, conference, or conversation with a prospective donor, prepare. Know where you’re going. Know something about the organization. Find out who might be there. Think about what you hope to learn and whom you hope to meet. You might still be nervous when you arrive, but at least you won’t be surprised b...
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We Can Rebuild Her

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I have had so many joint reconstruction surgeries that the next one would be old enough to drink, although hopefully wise enough to know better. That's not a metaphor. [ NOTE:  Yes, that is an actual photo of the X-rays from several of my more complicated surgeries. ] At this point, I have an impressive collection of orthopedic hardware, scars, and X-rays that look considerably more science fiction than medical science. Both shoulders have been reconstructed. My wrists have been rebuilt. My feet have enough assorted screws, plates, pins, and other hardware that when somebody looks at the X-rays, there is usually a moment of silence followed by some version of, “Wow.” Over the years, more than one person has called me the Bionic Woman . People of a certain age will immediately hear the sound effect. I didn’t come up with the nickname myself, but I can’t exactly argue with the evidence. Put a few of my X-rays together, and I begin to look less like a patient and more like somebody’s ...
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Monday Matters: What Could We Do If We Stopped Being Afraid?

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Spooky season is upon us, so it seems like a good time to confess that I am truly afraid of only three things: heights, big spiders, and math. I haven't made much progress with the first two, but I have forced myself to get more comfortable with numbers. At the end of the day, doing good requires money. Nonprofit funding does not grow on trees, much as we might wish it did. If I want to help organizations raise money and make sound decisions, I need to be able to look at budgets, giving histories, and fundraising results without hoping someone else will do the math for me. I still wouldn't call it my favorite activity, but I've learned that the numbers can tell us something useful when we are willing to look. I often say that I haven't been bored since I was 16. Following my curiosity has led me into some *interesting* situations, including plenty where I did not feel entirely prepared. Sometimes I went because I knew I had something to offer. Other times, I went becaus...
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Funding Friday: Listen, Then Make Room

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Funding Friday is arriving on Saturday, and I owe you an apology. Consistency matters when you ask people to make room for your work each week. I missed Friday because I had just returned from the 2026 PANO Collaborative Conference , and I needed a little time to take it all in before writing about it. The conference was phenomenal. PANO put together a fantastic, inclusive gathering, and I’m grateful I had the opportunity to attend. I met people from across the nonprofit sector who brought different experiences and perspectives to a shared concern: how we can better serve the public good. If you were there and we didn’t meet, I missed out. I was the person with the very bouncy ringlets wearing the chicken shirt on the first day, in case that helps you place me. I hope we get another chance. I expect I’ll write more about the conversations and ideas I brought home. Today, I want to focus on the biggest takeaway: I need to go home and listen to the people I serve. Nonprofit work gives us...
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Monday Matters: "I've Got a Special Purpose!"

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I could probably write an entire blog post about why The Jerk is a nearly perfect movie, and maybe someday I will. But for now, I want to talk about Navin Johnson and his “special purpose.” If you haven't seen The Jerk , Navin, played by Steve Martin, is one of the great characters in American comedy. He is naive beyond reason. He misunderstands almost everything. He wanders into situations for which he is spectacularly unprepared and somehow remains convinced everything will work out. And yet, beneath all the absurdity, Navin is an extraordinarily good person. He is curious. He is enthusiastic. He loves without much reservation. He believes people. He wants to help. When good fortune finally finds him, one of his first instincts is to share it. Even his disastrous inventions begin with the idea that he has figured out something that might make somebody's life a little better. The world repeatedly gives Navin reasons to become cynical, and somehow he doesn't. I think that ...
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Funding Friday: Maybe It *Is* Time to Call Someone

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I have an upper respiratory infection. I know this because, after being sick for nearly a week, I finally went to a doctor. And by “went,” I mean I had a virtual appointment. From the moment I finally decided that I needed medical attention to the time I had seen a doctor and picked up prescriptions for antibiotics and Flonase, less than an hour had passed. Nearly a week of feeling miserable. Less than an hour to do something about it. There is probably a Funding Friday lesson in there somewhere. Small and mid-sized nonprofits can be remarkably resistant to asking for help. We convince ourselves that we can figure it out. We can get through this grant cycle. We can fix the bookkeeping problem. We can straighten out the board. We can develop a fundraising strategy later. We can update the website ourselves. We can deal with the database eventually. Sometimes we do figure it out. Sometimes we spend six months struggling with something that someone else could have helped us address in an ...
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