#19 | How do fundraisers engage the likes of Mark Zuckerberg?

I really enjoyed this conversation with Shelley Birdsong Maddex who has more than two decades experience as a corporate and foundation relations fundraiser. Shelley's experience affords her perspective of today’s investment-minded donor who is unlike the donor many of us knew earlier in our careers.

I appreciated Shelley’s suggestions for how we can engage with this modern donor in order to earn their confidence and to ensure that we are speaking a similar language before we solicit this person’s financial support.

I got real sense of Shelley’s confidence and experience when she responded to my question about how to engage with the likes of Mark Zuckerberg.

If your organization desires to improve its corporate and foundation relations efforts, or if you simply want to join the conversation the two of us started here, I would encourage you to reach out to Shelley here. You may also visit her website at www.thebirdsonggroup.net/ 

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As a reminder, we will wrap up 2018 with a special six-part series where we will take a closer look at fundraising counsel. Many have heard me say that the fundraising profession is in the midst of a messy adolescence. Likewise, I believe that those of us to whom non-profits go for advice are experiencing some growing pains of our own. As you’ve come to expect, I don’t mind asking questions in order to better understand why this might be. Rather than assert my own opinions, I decided we would enlist the opinions of a diverse group who are providing fundraising counsel and ask them what they think some of our challenges and opportunities might be. This special series will begin on December 26.

And I would also like to alert our listeners that we are currently organizing our 2019 line-up. If you would like to be a guest in 2019, please visit here.