New Year! New Info to Help You Grow Your Team!
By Mary Hernandez, Petrus Blog Contributor
The newest release of the Association of Fundraising Professionals (AFP) annual Compensation and Benefits Study is timed perfectly for organizations creating a strategic plan to start or grow their development team in the new year. We've limited the scope of the 178-page report to look at key findings from the United States in religious, higher education, and human services sectors.
The data takes some of the mystery out navigating compensation for development professionals, who are integral to making your development program successful. By looking holistically at professional compensation relative to organization budget, team size, geographic region, and several other data points, you will better understand how growing your team may impact your budget.
Organizations should be mindful that statistics and numbers only tell a part of the story. These data points do not measure the intangible qualities that ultimately make a...
Women in Philanthropy Episode 8 with Amy Kawula
Hosted by Tara Doyon, Director of Client Services and Sarah Rose, Director of Communications.
In this episode Tara and Sarah are joined by Amy Kawula, the Advertising & Marketing Manager of The Compass at the Diocese of Green Bay. They discuss the importance of communication in your development work through the wide range of Amy's experience. Learn how development officers can approach communication offices in the diocese for great success. Amy also gives us fantastic advice for women who would like to work in the church in a leadership position.
Show Notes:
Amy Kawula has served the Diocese of Green Bay the past 35 years and is currently the advertising and marketing manager at The Compass. During this time, she has served in nearly every department of the diocese.
This has allowed her to develop relationships with staff, parishes, schools and the community that have contributed to successful marketing strategies and increased revenue for The...
Sacred Starters - An Interview with Bill Woolsey on the Petrus Development Show
In this episode, Andrew sits down with Bill Woolsey, Founder and President of FiveTwo Network. They discussed the qualities of a good founder, mistakes that founders typically make and what it means to be a sacred starter. If you have started or are thinking about launching a new ministry or company, you definitely want to check this out.
Show Notes:
Bill has been a pastor since 1987, and he and his wife currently call the Land of Uplift in the Texas hill country home. He was always the evangelism guy and realized that the older the community, the older the members, the harder it is to break in and plant a new church.
In 2009, he founded FiveTwo Network to support church planters and entrepreneurs of the church.
In 2015, he left his pastoral placements and went full-time with FiveTwo.
FiveTwo was named for the story of Jesus feeding the five hundred when a single young man gave what he had to further the mission of Christ. And that everybody who starts something...
Women in Philanthropy Episode 7 with Helen Osman and Katie Richards
Hosted by Tara Doyon, Director of Client Services and Sarah Rose, Director of Communications.
In this episode Tara and Sarah are joined by Sarah's mother and sister Helen Osman and Katie Richards of Greater Wings. In this episode, they cover a wide range of topics that all come back to the importance of communication in your ministry, in your teams and in the church. Honesty and open communication build trust as well as allow you to fulfill your mission. Find out how you can build and incorporate working communication skills in your organization.
Show Notes:
Helen Osman has more than 30 years of local, national and international experience with particular expertise in mentoring mission-focused organizations to integrate public awareness, catechetical expectations and advocacy priorities for the organization’s stakeholders and audiences, using multiple communication platforms and networks. She began her career in Catholic media working for the diocesan newspaper in...
Monthly Giving Made Easy - An Interview with Erica Waasdorp on the Petrus Development Show
In this episode, Andrew visits with Erica Waasdorp, author of Monthly Giving: The Sleeping Giant and Monthly Giving Made Easy, as well as President and Founder of A Direct Solution. She has been in the monthly giving game for close to 30 years and has tons of expertise in this area. Together they discussed the question about subscriptions versus monthly gifts, six easy steps for launching a program and strategies for how to keep your donors giving for a long, long time.
Show Notes
Erica is originally from the Netherlands, speaks 5 languages and is the author of two books, Monthly Giving: The Sleeping Giant and Monthly Giving Made Easy.
Background
She is President and Founder of A Direct Solution. Erica started her career in Readers Digest, married an American and moved to United States in 1993. After they moved, she worked for a big animal organization and took on their monthly giving program.
She later started A Direct Solution and had the idea for her...
What Development Means to Me by Matt Bond
By Matt Bond, Director of Development at St. John's Catholic Student Center at Oklahoma State University
As many people in our field, I fell into the profession of development by happenstance. A great priest walked into a classroom of my former student center where my sister-in-law just happened to be sitting and said I’m looking for … and he proceeded to list a number of attributes he was looking for in a development director. She said, “call my brother-in-law” and it was all downhill or uphill, depending on the specific point in my career, from there. Truthfully, I had no idea what I was getting into and looking back through the rear-view mirror, I really had no idea.
When it comes to ministry, I have a unique take. I came from a ministry position where I was leading all of the programming, each year I was given a budget, and I led the team. Now, I am a development professional helping ministries fund their programming.
...
Staying True to Mission - An Interview with Ryan Carney on the Petrus Development Show
In this episode, Andrew visits with Ryan Carney, Chief Advancement Officer of Society of St. Vincent de Paul. They discuss Ryan's journey with development and the challenges that he has experienced and conquered throughout his years with non-profits. They also discuss the work they are doing at St. Vincent de Paul and how he helped one local chapter back from a pretty bad case of mission creep. If you have ever dealt with mission creep or if you are struggling to identify your organizations true mission, you'll want to take notes.
Show Notes:
Background
He fell into development by accident. He had been able to attend an event where a presentation by Catholic Charities took place and that is where the introduction to non-profits and development took route. He graduated from the Chaifetz School of Business at Saint Louis University.
After graduation, he found himself working to Enterprise where he was able to Rent a car to the current executive...
Donor-Centered Language
By Mary Hernandez, Petrus Blog Contributor
Your year-end appeal is about to get to the final proofing stage, and thankfully, there is still time to edit with a critical eye and include your donors as a key player in your messaging.
Your appeal likely includes these elements:
- Transformative faith experiences of one or more students
- A recap of the number and kind of students involved this year
- A summary of a particularly successful ministry outreach event or retreat
These glory stories and positive growth statistics are important and good to share with the reader, and they will undoubtedly lift their spirits and be a cause for hope. Yet, it is essential to remember that appeals are about you [the donor] and us [the ministry]. Making the donor visible in your ministry’s story is critical to a successful appeal and strengthening donor engagement.
I want to share some practical and real-life appeal examples with...
Women in Philanthropy Episode 6 with Leticia Ochoa-Adams
Hosted by Tara Doyon, Director of Client Services and Sarah Rose, Director of Communications.
In this episode Tara and Sarah are joined by Leticia Ochoa-Adams, Writer and Speaker. They discuss being "poor" in the Catholic Church as well as grieving a great loss and how the church responds. Find out what the similarities are when giving as a donor and giving as a community rallying around one of their own.
Show Notes:
Leticia Ochoa Adams is a born and raised Tejana who loves bluebonnets, longhorns and Texas shaped waffles. She writes and speaks on faith, grief and suicide loss because after the loss of her oldest son Anthony to suicide she saw a lack of space for honest grieving and acknowledgement of trauma so she set out to create one.
Inspired by other women who have a passion and gift for storytelling like Jen Fulwiler, Nora McInerny and Stephanie Wittles Wachs who all make stories on their own terms, Leticia set out to do the same which is to use storytelling as...
What Development Means to Me by JoAnn Shull
By JoAnn Shull, Petrus Consultant
I’m going to be really honest with you, dear reader, in that for the vast majority of my life I had no idea what this idea of “development” was or that I would end up in a career that I didn’t even know existed.
Growing up, my family was not church-going, but I fell into going to the youth group at my parish thanks to some high school friends. My involvement at church and my relationship with Christ grew into my college years where I stayed very active in my Catholic Newman Center at Truman State University. In an unfortunate twist of events, two weeks after I graduated from college, my Newman Center was struck by lightning and burned to the ground. My bike – which was still chained to the bike rack outside the center – was warped from the heat of the flames.
This was a huge shock for me. A place that was so formative in my faith was gone. All that remained...
