Reflections on Generosity
Kick off your week with a 5-minute reflection on generosity to ground yourself in the right mindset for capital campaigns. Each reflection includes a question to ponder throughout the week to aid your work.
Reflections on Generosity
118: A Trusted Leader Makes the Case
"...If you don’t know what harbour you sail for, no wind is favourable. Because we live by chance, chance necessarily has great power over our lives..."
In our series on uncertainty during small town capital campaigns, This week, I’m reading from Seneca’s Letter 71, first published in 65 AD.
Reflection questions:
- How trusted is the Executive Director or CEO among your donors and the community?
- Is the vision for the capital campaign being communicated clearly, consistently, and with courage amidst uncertainties?
Reflection on the quote:
Continuing with the theme of economic or societal uncertainty during a small town capital campaign, I’ve been reflecting on the role of the Executive Director or CEO. While the trust of Board and the Campaign Chair matters, it’s the Executive Director that matters most in terms of the success of a capital campaign.
When an Executive Director is trusted in the community, the community is more open to hearing the vision. Then the vision must be communicated clearly, consistently, and with courage. The community has to know which harbor the nonprofit is directing the community to fund under the leadership of that Executive Director. Otherwise, trivial circumstances and chance events will blow the capital campaign off course. However, when there is trust and a clear vision from the leader, the vision becomes steeped into the community and the community embraces the vision and generosity towards that vision despite uncertainty.
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Music credit: Woeisuhmebop
Welcome back. This podcast explores the wisdom of generosity, from ancient to modern, and the beautiful space where generosity occurs during small town capital campaigns. If you like this podcast, please rate or review in your favorite podcast app.
Continuing with the theme of economic or societal uncertainty during a small town capital campaign, I’ve been reflecting on the role of the Executive Director or CEO. While the trust of Board and the Campaign Chair matters, it’s the Executive Director that matters most in terms of the success of a capital campaign. The Roman Stoic Seneca reflected on the role of leadership and vision for a community. This week, I’m reading from Seneca’s Letter 71, first published in 65 AD.
Quote
Whenever you want to know what is to be avoided or what is to be sought, look to the highest good, the purpose of your entire life. For whatever we do ought to agree with that. Only someone who has before him a general purpose for his whole life will put individual things in order. No matter how ready one’s paints might be, no one will produce a likeness unless he has a clear notion of what he wants to paint. So we make mistakes because we deliberate about the parts of life; no one deliberates about the whole.
He who wants to shoot an arrow ought to know what he is aiming at and then direct and guide the weapon with his hand. Our counsels go astray because they do not have a target to be aimed at. If you don’t know what harbour you sail for, no wind is favourable. Because we live by chance, chance necessarily has great power over our lives.
The wise person indeed conquers fortune with his virtue, but many who claim to have wisdom have often been terrified by the most trivial threats. Here the fault is our own, since we demand the same thing of a wise person and of a progressor. I am still urging on myself the things which I praise, but I don’t yet convince myself about them. Even if I had convinced myself, I would not yet have things in readiness or so thoroughly practiced that they could successfully confront all chance events.
Just as wool accepts some colours on one dipping but cannot absorb others unless it has been repeatedly steeped and boiled, so too our temperament immediately shows the results of some studies as soon as it has been exposed to them, but this one shows none of the results it promises unless it penetrates deeply and settles for a long time, unless it doesn’t just colour the mind but dyes it.
Unquote
When an Executive Director is trusted in the community, the community is more open to hearing the vision. Then the vision must be communicated clearly, consistently, and with courage. The community has to know which harbor the nonprofit is directing the community to fund under the leadership of that Executive Director. Otherwise, trivial circumstances and chance events will blow the capital campaign off course. However, when there is trust and a clear vision from the leader, the vision becomes steeped into the community and the community embraces the vision and generosity towards that vision despite uncertainty.
Let’s reflect on these 2 questions:
How trusted is the Executive Director or CEO among your donors and the community?
Is the vision for the capital campaign being communicated clearly, consistently, and with courage amidst uncertainties?
Share this podcast if you enjoy these five-minute reflections and subscribe to receive these reflections released every Monday. To explore small town capital campaign coaching deeper, visit Serving Nonprofits dot com. See you next week.
