[Lnc-business] Proposed

[Joe Bishop-Henchman]

I guess Mr. Fishman's honeymoon period is over!

I'm willing to hear out our ED and not shoot it down immediately, but 
for my part I will need a lot more details when we consider it. If we're 
hiring a contractor, I want to know precisely what tasks the contractor 
will be doing on at least a quarterly basis if not a monthly or weekly 
basis, and how (and who) will be actively monitoring progress and 
adjusting based on the results.

I will also need to review the information addressing whether this 
violates the Bylaws or common past understandings of the role of the 
Chair or LNC members.

This contractor-who-knows-us approach would be preferable, in my view, 
to hiring a commission fundraiser who knows little about us and 
therefore will be ineffective at securing major donors willing to invest 
long-term with us. In-person telemarketing, which is effectively what 
that is, can be effective for raising money quickly, but only at 
enormous expense (as a percent of dollar raised), great risk of 
misrepresentation, and at the expense of a continuing relationship.

Ideally we need to construct a fundraising department, essentially from 
scratch now. We have two main donor audiences - major donors and small 
dollar donors - and each of them needs attention as to their 
prospecting/qualification/opening doors, asking/closing, and 
stewardship/cultivation. That's essentially six completely different 
skills (2 audiences times 3 jobs each) and we can't have one person do 
all of it and expect them to do better than Lauren could. We also can't 
hire six people, so the answer is going to be a mix of LNC members, the 
ED, staff, and contractors.

If we're going to get to a place where we are raising millions of 
dollars or more each year, building a fundraising department is an 
essential second step. (The first step is doing exciting things donors 
want to support, or at least proposing to focus on those things. On that 
part, I'd like to invite Apollo to the next Board meeting and tell us 
what he has up his sleeves.) If what Mr. Fishman proposes is a step in 
that direction, I'm more inclined to support it. If not, not.

As Mr. Phillips I think noted, if we say no to everything and propose 
nothing we will quickly realize in a bad way how important fundraising 
is.

JBH

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Joe Bishop-Henchman
LNC Member (At-Large)
joe.bishop-henchman at lp.org
www.facebook.com/groups/189510455174837

On 2019-07-05 16:50, John Phillips via Lnc-business wrote:
> Then lets get hiring.