Funding Your Vision: New Hope for Non-Profits

Rating:
Summary: Easy read; Step-by-Step Guide to Fundraising
Review: Gerald Twombly, the President of Develpment Marking Associates, Inc., has provided an excellent, easy-to-read, book on fundraisign for not-for-profit organizations. While such material easily be dry and make one's eyes glaze over, Twombly actually succeeds in making his book a (mildly) exciting page-turner--quite a feat for a fundraising book.

This brief (111 pages) book essentially chronicles fifteen weekly meetings between Frustrated Man and the Visionary. Frustrated Man runs a not-for-profit agency which does great things for many people, but Frustrated Man dreams of taking it to the next level--which he can't do without increased, steady funding. Frustrated Man is thus becoming increasingly...um...frustrated. The Visionary is a man who knows Frustrated Man's problems well and spends several weeks holding brief meetings with Frustrated Man in order to show him, step-by-step, how to increase his funding and achieve the dreams he has for his organization.

Twombly must be a master at organizational fundraising as he makes this complex task seem easy and exciting. Never having been in a position that required me to raise funds, Twombly's book not only made me believe that I could do it well, but that it would actually be enjoyable cultivating relationships that involve my regularly asking for money! But while Twombly makes fundraising seem possible and enjoyable, the book pulls no punches when communicating the idea that effective fundraising will require a shift in priorities, systemic change, and hard work, but big changes are presented in such a way as to make it seem managable and worthwhile.

While I recommend this book (which only requires a couple hours of time to read), I did find relatively little that a parish pastor would probably find helpful. This book seems geared more toward organizations like homeless shelters, retirement homes, community activist groups, etc. Pastors can, however, find many things to glean from this "Funding your Vision."