Watching competitive rowing—what’s often called “crew’’—is watching teamwork in action.  When a team is in complete harmony, it’s truly a beautiful thing to watch as the shell slips seamlessly through the water.

Looks effortless.  As with any fine-tuned effort, however, appearances are often deceiving.

Each seat on an eight-man boat, requires something quite specific of the person sitting in it.  Each position on the boat demands a unique but coordinated role.

Achieving success—consistently—requires each member of the team to know their role and to execute it consistently, flawlessly and in concert with every other team member in the boat.

When this happens, it’s called Swing™[1].   It’s beautiful to see—and exhilarating to experience.

Sound difficult to achieve?  It can be.  But it doesn’t have to be.

When your fundraising program has swing, NOTHING can stop it.  It just keeps delivering consistently while expanding your sustainable results.  Almost despite itself.

With swing, the members of your fundraising team become a totally integrated unit.

Who’s on your fundraising “team”?

Literally everyone in your organization.

Executive, board members, staff—both program and development, along with volunteers, all have their specific role.  They know where they “fit” and they know how they influence the performance of other team members as well as the whole.

With the right knowledge, practice, and coaching any organization—ANY ORGANIZATION—can achieve swing in fundraising.

When your fundraising program has swing, NOTHING will stop it.  Your fundraising efforts just keep delivering, and delivering, and delivering.

When you’ve got swing, your organization’s fundraising simply cannot fail.

Achieving swing must be difficult, you say.

Yes—but it’s not as tough as you may think.

Everyone in an organization—staff members, board members, volunteers—all have a role to play in the fundraising enterprise.

EVERYONE.

Some roles are big.  Some roles are small.  But ALL roles are critical to the success of your fundraising effort.

Knowing your role then executing flawlessly is half the battle.  The other half is in knowing how it fits into the whole and working smoothly with the rest of the team—your organization.

This is why The Eight Principles team exists.  We put you in swing.

We identify the skills you need, then help you acquire them, while expertly coaching your team.  We provide the tools for you to not only create swing, but also for your organization to maintain it for years to come.

Our skills and team building approach is unique.

It delivers outsized results.  Today. Next month. Next year.

Like to know more?  Talk to us.

We look forward to speaking with you.

Remember, the system you design yields the results you deserve.

[1] “Swing” as used by Sig Berg, The Virtue Proposition, ã2024, Amplify Publishing Group:  Herndon, Virginia