SWAN (Strategic Workforce & Arts Network) Blog

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...

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...