Two roles, one promise
If you run the organization
The receipts only you can resource.
Data that carries a donor’s name correctly. Handoffs that survive a staff change. When a promise breaks, the cause usually sits upstream of the person who delivered the news.
Start here, ED →If you raise the money
The receipts you can keep starting Monday.
The acknowledgment that arrives on time. The follow-up after the meeting. The proposal delivered on the day you said it would be. Small, visible, and never optional.
- Field Notes
- The Reference Card and Trust Audit
- Make a thirty-day promise
- Coaching for Directors of Development
Why both
The visible receipts and the invisible ones are kept in different parts of the organization. Donors only ever see the total.
Every gift sets three parties in relation: the donor, the organization, and the people the gift is finally for. A receipt is the one thing that touches all three at once. The donor sees it. The organization has to produce it. The beneficiary is the reason it exists.
Neither role can keep that promise alone. The development office makes most of the visible promises. The rest of the organization keeps most of the invisible ones. Trust is what builds up when both halves hold, one kept promise at a time.
The Four Receipts · Coaching
The same discipline, practised by one leader.
An organization keeps its promises when the people who lead it keep theirs. The Four Receipts coaches executive directors and directors of development once a month for six months, in person, with a private ledger of every promise made, owned, kept and proved.
Leadership Notes
All →On building an organization where promises get kept.
Leadership Note 110826 · Story
The Crosswind
The board names the director, the director names the board, and both settle on the staff. A story about a leader, his ledger and the correction that looks wrong but lands.
Leadership Note 110426 · Essay
The Story Has to Be Backed
Every story an organization tells is a promise to the bearer. Why stories persuade on their own power, what happens when they run ahead of the record, and a one-hour check of your own.
Field Notes
All →What the field repeats, and what the receipts show.
Field Note 110926 · Essay
The Code Is the Promise
The appeal code records when we asked. It should record what we promised, so the receipt can follow.
Field Note 102726 · Essay
The River Is Not the Watershed
Warmth matters. It just isn't the watershed. The fundraiser is the river, and what it carries is decided upstream, by the whole fundraising system.
Make a promise. Keep it.
Make another. Keep it.
Make your thirty-day promise →Working tools
Speaking, teaching and coaching
For conferences, boards and leadership teams that want the receipts in the room.
One-on-one coaching for Executive Directors and Directors of Development: The Four Receipts.
Glen E. Quiring, CFRE · in nonprofit leadership since 1985
Bring the keynote →