We shared our top summer reading recommendations for Advancement professionals a few months ago and it was one of our most popular articles to date.
To help fuel your ongoing professional development, we want to share a few more resources you can pick up during the fall season. Whether you’re looking to rethink your fundraising strategy, bolster your leadership skills, or improve how you communicate with constituents, these books are perfect for admission, development, and marketing/communications administrators.
Donor-Centered Fundraising: How to hold on to your donors and raise much more money by Penelope Burk.
Why do people stop donating to organizations they once supported? Author, researcher, and consultant Penelope Burk explores this phenomenon, using research collected over six years from hundreds of charities and donors. She highlights the common pitfalls of traditional donor communication and shares a groundbreaking methodology that challenges accepted fundraising practices to help organizations raise more money.
Donor-Centered Leadership: What it takes to build a high-performance fundraising team by Penelope Burk.
Creating an efficient fundraising team is one task—but reducing attrition levels to keep that team intact is another. In this companion book, Burk shares her findings from analyzing over 12,000 advancement professionals, Board members, CEOs, and donors to illustrate the power of keeping a good team together. This book is an essential read for advancement professionals at any level, from decision-makers to development staff aspiring to leadership positions.
Nonprofit Essentials, Endowment Building by Diana S. Newman.
Looking to start, grow, and maintain an endowment? Diana Newman’s book is a great place to start. It provides both a strategic framework and practical, tactical advice for building successful endowment programs. As one review puts it, “After you read this book, you will not have to wake up in the middle of the night to wonder, ‘Am I missing something or am I doing something wrong?’ You will know what to do and how to do it.”
Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most by Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, and Sheila Heen.
Admission, development, and marketing/communications professionals are often faced with some of the toughest conversations within the school. Whether that’s politely turning away a prospective family, managing relationships with donors, or dealing with a PR crisis, it’s never easy to talk about a challenging topic. Difficult Conversations provides a step-by-step approach for broaching these interactions with less stress and leaving with more success.
Fierce Conversations: Achieving Success at Work and in Life, One Conversation at a Time by Susan Scott.
When it comes to analyzing how you communicate, don’t stop at difficult conversations. Every communication is an opportunity to spur positive change. Scott shares how to overcome barriers to meaningful communication; increase clarity and improve understanding; handle strong emotions and personalities; and better connect with colleagues, customers, and family to expand and enrich relationships.
Have you read any good career or professional-development focused books lately? Let us know below.
Additional ISM Resources:
The Source for Advancement Vol. 15 No. 8 2017 Summer Reading Recommendations for Admission and Development Directors
The Source for Advancement Vol. 14 No. 10 2016 Summer Reading List for Admission Directors
The Source for Advancement Vol. 14 No. 10 2016 Summer Reading List for Development Directors
The Source for Private School News Vol. 16 No. 7 2017 Summer Reading Recommendations for Private-Independent School Administrators
