For all of us trying to blend what we know to be the essentials of our fundraising practices with new skills required during this time - might it be possible for us to cultivate more fun, humor, and grace into our learning process?

“The concrete is wet right now in a way that I’ve never seen in my career. There’s a lot more opportunity now to reimagine,” says Henry Timms, CEO of Lincoln Center, which is shifting to become more of a civic institution as well as a cultural one. “My prediction is, in three years’ time, when we look back at this period, there’ll be a real difference between those organizations who saw this as just a pause, and those organizations who saw this as a chance to reframe their work.”

Since the earliest stage of my career, I have navigated fluctuations in the economy, the lives of major stakeholders and donors, and the organizations to which I have served.  So not to get sucked in by what I affectionately label " the vortex" I have, with intentionality BUT not perfection, cultivated a mindset and practice that enables me to not only survive but sometimes even thrive in challenging circumstances and achieve excellence in fundraising through all sorts of storms.

At ABW Partners, our philosophy is that organizations must have the discipline to engage in priming, a series of preliminary, foundation-building advancement activities and strategies designed to achieve robust growth-oriented and sustainable fundraising.

We developed a model that we use as our true north in our consulting practice. It’s Philanthropy at Core.