How many of you are staring at the last month of the fiscal year?
I am, and just like looking through the lens of the past 12 months of a calendar year, I’m reflecting on the huge activity of the past 12 months of my business year. Wow, huge puts it lightly.
In 12 short months everything about how I do my job has changed. My role has changed. People left the organization causing ripples of sadness and change, and people have come into the organization bringing, oddly enough – hope.
We think hope miraculously appears one day, at the end of great turmoil and prolonged upheaval. But it doesn’t; you have to find it. You must look for it, in the dying flames of what was…. for what can be. As fundraisers, we try to be hopeful when donors ghost us, leaving our large proposed funding requests unanswered for many, many months. Then, suddenly one day a cheque for six figures arrives late in the month of December, and with your surprise and renewed faith in your abilities, you are once again hopeful that the same will happen with this other…one (or two, or…you get the point).
Hope comes from number crunching, and seeing that in the business of the days you might have not seen how much you have actually brought in. Hope comes from suddenly seeing new opportunities that you might not have considered before. Hope comes when you take stock of all the steps you took, and things you did right, which is so often overlooked by us raging Type A results driven by the numbers, perfectionists.
In a year of a pandemic, of undeserved tragedies, of for some unmeasurable loss, it is hard to have hope. So, you “out of the box, try everything to get the gift” thinkers, I encourage you to look for your “hope” where you may not have thought to. I’m hopeful you’ll find it, as I have.
Hopefully yours, Eyre.
Eyre Purkin Bien CFRE is a results based, goal oriented fundraiser who refuses to add the word 'no' to her vocabulary. A long time facilitator of volunteer boards/campaign cabinets, she considers herself highly skilled in all forms of philanthropic development. The donor is her first, last and only concern when working to engage someone in the organization she believes in and works for.
