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 twice a month, 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 102326 · Essay
The Ghosts We Need
Scrooge did not change by trying harder. Leaders turn people into roles without noticing, and we cannot see it from inside. Three kinds of interruption a leader can build in.
Leadership Note 102226 · Essay
The Cleaning Station
Most leaders believe they see themselves clearly, and the higher they rise, the fewer people will tell them otherwise. What coaching is for, and a receipts review you can start this month.
Field Notes
All →What the field repeats, and what the receipts show.
Field Note 101626 · Essay
The Junco and the Fire Engine
A bird that sounds like a car alarm and a siren with responders on the way. One story lands. The other one works.
Field Note 101126 · Essay
The Windmill and the Ask
A wind turbine does not make the wind. A good ask does not make the donor’s motivation either. It stands where that motivation already moves.
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 →