News/Blog

“Do something every day that scares you,” was the advice of one of my early mentors, a high school teacher.  I am not sure I do something that scares me every day, but I will recount something I did recently that scared me. 

While I am beginning the final weeks of serving as the President of our great Chapter, I’ve had the chance to reflect on the role AFP-NYC will play in shaping the future of our profession.  In the process, I came to realize that probably at least one-third, if not half of the positions and titles that will lead development shops beyond the next decade don’t even exist today.

How Do We LEAD?

Three weeks ago, fellow AFP-NYC board member, Kerry Watterson, and I headed out to Phoenix, where we had the pleasure and honor to represent our chapter at the AFP LEAD conference.  

My colleagues have written about the state of the fundraising sector in the last few leadership briefs, reflecting on results from a recent study about low retention rates among fundraisers.  They shared some insightful reasons for this and how we as a profession can work together to address this.

There’s a lot going on in our sector right now.  We’re debating the ethics of fundraising in the wake of the college admission and Epstein scandals.  We continue to worry about fundraiser retention as yet another study illustrates many of us are unhappy in our jobs and planning to make job or career changes.

AFP-NYC EDUCATIONAL PROGRAM
September 19, 2019, Scandinavia House, New York City

Much has been said and written about a recent Chronicle of Philanthropy survey that found that 51% of fundraisers plan to leave their jobs within the next two years, and 30% plan to leave the fundraising profession altogether. 

For some of you, the phrase "Say It Ain’t So" might harken you back to the mid-90's when rock band Weezer released a song on their first album by that name. For others, it might have the literal meaning of disbelief and the hope that someone will assure you that what you just heard isn’t real. 

So before I head out for vacation I thought I would share with you the values that our Development team created to guide our work.  We adapted them from the set of values we follow at Phelps Hospital—which are centered on providing the best patient care.  We use the acronym Phelps Pride. 

There has been a great deal of hype and discussion surrounding Ray Dalio’s book, Principles: Life and Work. It’s a New York Times bestseller and I encourage you to pick it up if you’re looking for a career-energizing summer read. As I was reading it made me think that as philanthropy professionals, we could start our own book of guiding principles and start to gather our collective wisdom.