The Little Words Mean the Most

Successful comms ARE about how wonderful the donor is.

Successful comms are NOT about how wonderful your organization is. Silly people.

Dear AFP chapter considering my fee

 

What’s today worth to the community?

 

According to the MasteringMajorGifts.com report, research by Amy Eisenstein and Dr. Adrian Sargeant, every time a fundraiser attends any kind of quality educational presentation, their charity brings in an added $37,000 that year in donor income. Great ROI.

Here's the math for an AFP half-day with 100 attendees:

 

$37,000 in added income per fundraiser who attends

x 100 fundraisers attend (and assuming everyone follows the recommendations heard)

= $3.7 million in extra giving for local charities and your community from today’s half-day training event

 

 

Jane Joyaux, Simone's mom, rest in peace as of this morning

It snowed in Ann Arbor on Sunday, May 15. The tulips were loud; the lilacs abundant, too. Jane died at noon on Tuesday, attended as ever by Andree and Fred. In the bosom of her family as they say. They spoke to her calmly, reassuringly. They heard Jane's last breath. Waited. Called for a nurse. Jane left six children behind, seven grandchildren (that's Julie completing a cheer in Jane's sickroom) and one great-grandchild (Griffin).

The wonderful memories flooded in.

Simone and I had the habit of scooping up Jane when we traveled.

We rented a house outside Santa Fe so Simone could start writing her first book. Jane was with us.

wherein Off in the distance youcouldsee the movie set constructed in sorta mythic bleak Western US desert country for Silverado, wherein Kevin Costner debuted live on screen (his dead debut was as the suicide in The Big Chill).

Mosquitoes th'size of biting protons made New Mexico's calendar-ready purple and saffron twilight a misery outdoors. We went walking in the early hot morning. It felt lightly occupied. An apt place to be abducted and murdered. Or exposed to a cult. Or as safe as a preschool's playground. Scenic. Like every childhood Western TV show we knew.

Jane stayed at the rental house. A Chicago couple owned and rented it. They collected "outsider art." It was a lovely house to spend two weeks in.

Jane was with her friend, Maryann, drinking coffee. Santa Fe had one of the most extraordinary, unique museums we've ever visited (and we've visited the Door Museum in Pézenas, France, which in fact is quite extraordinary @ its own proper scale).

 

VISIT The Folk Art Museum.

I dunno

            I have to tell you ...

            ... Nancy and I were blessed with fine health for almost 30 years. We were married that long. We had our physicals every year. Deep ones, too. Investors weren't taking a chance: back then, I ran a major oil company.

            You know another thing?

            Nancy and I had our plan. We knew exactly where we wanted to retire: here on Coronado Island, where San Diego greets the Pacific.

            What a magical spot! The "best beach in America." A caring, tight-knit community. It was love at first sight for us. ... Maybe it was for you, too! We moved to our Coronado dream home in 2000.

            Then in 2003 came the call. "Nancy, we want you to come back in. We want to take a second look." A second look found stage IV metastasized lung cancer.

            That's how fast a phone call can change your world.

            Before? It's bright, shiny, normal. You're going to take your grandchildren all these different places. You have these plans. Then that phone rings....

            By the fall of 2004 Nancy was gone.

Marquis de Sod

Every year about this time I drag the dahlias from the basement. They look tormented. They've thrown out white shoots a yard long, trying to find light. Back in November I pulled them from their small, begrudged garden. Discarded them into black plastic leaf sacks, with soil and some decomposing packing peanuts. They emerged today from my cellar in desperate shape.

There's a scene in Indiana Jones and The Holy Grail (?) where the rich, unscrupulous, egotistical, science-Nazi (no, NOT Donald Trump) drinks from the cup he agonizingly selected from two dozen Holy Grail candidates.

And, as bad guys do in movies, he chose wrong. With a German accent to boot, so double BOO!

He chose the imperial-looking cup, gold and jewels, drank, looked like he was experiencing a pretty heavenly moment or two, looking toward an indefinite future of anything he could imagine, beyond the rear view, beyond the rear window, beyond fate, beyond the past, beyond destiny, beyond talent, beyond ability.

He saw bliss.

But his was the wrong cup.

He'd chosen according to his prejudices. He was poisoned by himself. By pride. By superficiality. By arrogance.

As he progressed within seconds in the film through months of decay, his skull's hair grew out ... as long as the dahlia roots I saw exposed today. I pulled them from trash bags. Settled them into ground prepared with fertilizer and Preen. Encountered and paddled right through my annual dismay, at what I'd done. Banking the guilt. Best you can do.

Coming to Detroit, May 12

kids uttering swears: the last resort of a depleted communicator

Bowing-heady things: Mark Phillips