E-mail From an Strategic Fundraising Graduate

Bay Path’s MS in Strategic Fundraising and Philanthropy program is designed to help students advance their fundraising careers.  That’s why I was so happy to receive this recent e-mail from Lindsay Jordan, a graduate of the program:

“Hello, Jeffrey! I am super excited to send you the first email with a few more initials behind my name! I passed the CFRE exam! My husband asked me after it was over if it was "easy." Honestly, I wouldn't say that it was hard. But there is definitely a reason why. In my limited 5 years in fundraising, I've never been part of a capital campaign. I've never personally secured a planned gift. I've never done a lot of things, actually, because the fundraising portfolio is huge.

I CAN, however, speak intelligently about all of those things because my education at Bay Path was so incredibly comprehensive. In just a few years, I moved from a special events coordinator to a senior director of development with a master's degree and my CFRE! Every advancement I've seen in my career thus far has been leveraged on the foundation of my education, and I just wanted to thank you for it.” 

Please let me know if I can ever be of service to the school. I hope you have a wonderful week!

PS.  We will be offering a new graduate course next spring called:  Being a Successful Major Gifts Officer.  It will teach students how to engage “high net-worth” donors and secure multi-million dollar gifts. 

Effective Leaders Create "Place" for Stakeholders.

In our NMP 650 course called “Leading Change in Nonprofits” we discuss how effective leaders create a belief among an organization’s stakeholders that they are all working together toward a meaningful common goal. 

This theme is beautifully expressed in the following passage from a commencement address given this year by Atul Gawande at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill: 

“Ultimately, it turns out we all have an intrinsic need to pursue purposes larger than ourselves, purposes worth making sacrifices for.  People often say, “Find your passion.” But there’s more to it than that.  Not all passions are enough.  Just existing for you desires feels empty and insufficient, because our desires are fleeting and insatiable. You need a loyalty.  The only way life is not meaningless is to see yourself as part of something greater:  a family, a community, a society.  And that is the best part of what college has allowed you to do.  College made it easy.  It gave you an automatic place in the world where you could feel part of something greater.  The supposedly “real world” you are joining does not…..

“One thing I came to realize after college was that the search for purpose is really a search for a place, not an idea.  It is a search for a location in the world where you want to be part of making things better for others in your own small way.  It could be a classroom where you teach, a business where you work, a neighborhood where you live.  The key is, if you find yourself in a place where you stop caring—where your greatest concern becomes only you----get out of there.” 

Source:  NYTIMES June 15, 2014, Section 1 Page 20. 

On the Web at:  http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/15/us/2014-commencement-speakers.html?module=Search&mabReward=relbias%3Ar&_r=0