About Us

So where do we start?

The natural laws which govern philanthropy.  Unchangeable.  Unbreakable.  Principles are primary.  Techniques are secondary.  Principles are universal and unchanging.  Techniques are situational and temporal.

Lasting fundraising success begins with adopting the right outlook.  The right paradigm.

Most fundraising efforts focus on technique.  Techniques without the right paradigm will never achieve lasting, sustained success.  Hence the feeling of being on a treadmill experienced by most fundraisers.

What are the underlying principles?

The Eight Principles of Sustainable Fundraising®.  When you internalize the principles, a whole new world opens for you.  You realize that fundraising success is 90% thinking and 10% doing.

You realize your donors—your investors—aren’t focused on money even as fundraisers almost always are.  Your donors are focused on your outcomes and creating joy.  Your task is to help them fulfill their dreams.

When you adopt the principles something transformational occurs.  Synergy.  When 1 + 1 = 3.   You start looking at the world through a new lens.

With the principles a new worldview emerges.  One brimming with opportunity.

Once you’ve committed to the principles, choosing your methods is (almost) a snap.  Now you’re ready to create a program which fits your organization and will raise more money this year than last.  Guaranteed.

With the actionable knowledge of the principles, you create a fundraising program which consistently raises the most money for least cost.

Your fundraising becomes virtually impervious to economic head winds.  A fundraising program which gives you and your investors the joy of giving.  Your family of supporters continues to grow.

We give you the winning mindset.

We provide you with the training that puts you on the path to growing, sustained fundraising success.

We show you how to think in new ways then act accordingly.

We start with our fundraising compass, Orbis4™.  It gives you a clear-eyed view of your optimum path forward.

You learn fundraising success is 90% thinking and 10% doing.

We align the thinking of your staff, fundraisers and board members through one or more of our interactive workshops.  Created for adults with high levels of participation, activity and accountability.

You discover new revenue streams and increase the ones you have.

When you adopt The Eight Principles you deepen support among your current supporters while discovering many new ones.

Your fundraising costs—how much you’re spending to raise a dollar—drop dramatically.

The ROI of your fundraising efforts, the “return on investment” can go from a pathetically low of 25% to an eye-popping 600%.  With a low ROI, high costs are consuming much of what you’re currently raising.  Not good.

We show you how to make fundraising a true joy.

For many executives, board members and even fundraisers, the anxiety of “asking for money” is stifling.

With The Eight Principles®, the pit in your stomach that comes when someone says, “It’s time to fundraise, ” goes away.   You realize helping others realize their dreams is an opportunity to bring joy to your investors and yourself.  Your real fundraising potential is now in sight.

Our training brings significant organizational stability.

No more revolving doors for staff and board members.  The right people get involved–and stay.  Building an incredibly strong and stable organizational culture.

Your success becomes permanent.

With our Train-the-Trainer we prepare your in-house facilitators to deliver The Eight Principles® training to your fundraisers, staff and board members anytime—all the time.  This approach to professional caliber training is unique in the nonprofit world.  It produces outcomes which are higher in quality and creates an unassailable fundraising culture within your organization.  And it does so while costing a fraction of typical training.

Never has quality training been so accessible and affordable.

We know we have the best.  We want to share it with you.

We train to achieve results:

Engaged, high-functioning boards.  Confident, energized executives.  Productive fundraisers and development staff.  And perhaps most important, significantly improved fundraising performance:  raising much more money—permanently—at lower cost.

Adults learn by doing.  By involving others.

Our training experiences are created for action.  For team building.  For productive change.

What you’ll experience:

You’re never seated auditorium-style in a stuffy hotel meeting room listening to a speaker relay their expertise using 12-point slides, while taking a few notes, asking a few questions.  And hoping you’ll remember enough to make some practical use of what you’ve heard.

With Eight Principles team training you’re in a small group, typically 6 to 8. You’re learning by hearing, seeing, and doing.

Professionally produced videos stimulate your thinking.  The live facilitator takes your questions and encourages discussion.

Individual and group exercises put what you’ve learned into practice, even as your group becomes a functioning team.

There’s role play.  Learning something new in a protective setting of mutual self-respect.

Truly internalizing what you’ve just been taught by teaching another.

You encounter challenges which require you and another to arrive at a solution that neither of you had thought of before.  The third way.

You create your personal accountability plan.  You develop a plan for implementing in your organization what you’ve learned.  Both with built-in status and progress checks.

With your own Participant’s Journal, you create a personal record of what you’ve accomplished.

What can you expect:

The most engaging and rewarding training you’ve ever experienced.  Expect to be challenged.  Expect to see familiar things in totally new ways.  Expect to receive flashes of insight.  Expect to emerge more confident, more informed and better prepared than when you began.

Expect to experience 1 + 1 = 3.