fundraising quotes

FUNDRAISING

Fundraising is the gentle art of teaching the joy of giving.

- Hank Rosso

Donors don’t give to institutions. They invest in ideas and people in whom they believe.

- G.T. Smith

In good times and bad, we know that people give because you meet needs, not because you have needs.

- Kay Grace

He who allows his day to pass by without practicing generosity and enjoying life’s pleasures is like a blacksmith’s bellows—he breathes but does not live.

- Sanskrit Proverb

----

RESEARCH

Research is the process of going up alleys to see if they are blind.

- Marston Bates

If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?

- Albert Einstein

Action precedes funding

Planning precedes action. –Unknown

-----

ENGAGING

“Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but the seed you plant.” –Robert Louis Stevenson

“Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.” –Ralph Waldo Emerson

Computer dating is fine, if you’re a computer.

Rita Mae Brown

Assumptions are the termites of relationships.

Henry Winkler (1945 - )

Relationships of trust depend on our willingness to look not only to our own interests, but also the interests of others.

Peter Farquharson

--------------

ASKING

“No one has ever become poor by giving.” –Anne Frank

“When courage, genius, and generosity hold hands, all things are possible.” –Unknown

“It is more rewarding to watch money change the world than to watch it accumulate.” –Gloria Steinem

“The greatest use of a life is to spend it on something that will outlast it.” –William James

“Much is required from those to whom much is given.” –Luke 12:48

“There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.” –Edith Wharton

To keep a lamp burning we have to keep putting oil in it. Mother Theresa

God gives, but man must open his hand. -- German Proverb

------------------

LIVING/LOVING

Be thankful for what you have; you’ll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don’t have, you will never, ever have enough.

- Oprah Winfrey

The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated.

- William James

Appreciation can make a day—even change a life. Your willingness to put it into words is all that is necessary.

- Margaret Cousins

Silent gratitude isn’t much use to anyone.

- Gladys Browyn Stern

Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a gift and not giving it.

- Unknown

The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.

Carl Jung (1875 - 1961)

Friendship is certainly the finest balm for the pangs of disappointed love.

Jane Austen

He that gives should never remember, he that receives should never forget. -- Talmud

-----

DIFFERENCES

A great marriage is not when the 'perfect couple' comes together. It is when an imperfect couple learns to enjoy their differences.

Dave Meurer, "Daze of Our Wives"

So, let us not be blind to our differences - but let us also direct attention to our common interests and to the means by which those differences can be resolved.

John F. Kennedy (1917 - 1963)

Differences of habit and language are nothing at all if our aims are identical and our hearts are open.

J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

If by saying that all men are born free and equal, you mean that they are all equally born; it is true, but true in no other sense; birth, talent, labor, virtue, and providence, are forever making differences.

Eugene Edwards

Personality can open doors, but only character can keep them open.

Elmer G. Letterman

If it weren't for caffeine I'd have no personality whatsoever!

Anonymous

Economists are people who work with numbers but who don't have the personality to be accountants.

Unknown

----

GIVING

“You give little when you give of your possessions. It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.” –Kahil Gibran

“The price of living is giving.” –Unknown

“It is only in the giving of oneself to others that we truly live.” –Ethel Percy Andrus

“Sacrifice is giving up something good for something better.” –Unknown

“Real generosity to the future lies in giving all to the present.” –Albert Camus

“In the long run, we get no more than we have been willing to risk giving.” –Sheldom Kopp

“The best thing about giving of ourselves is that what we get is always better than what we give. The reaction is greater than the action.” –Orison Swett Marden

“The real test of success is whether a life has been a happy one and a happy giving one.” –Sir Henry Newbolt

“Remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he said, it is more blessed to give than to receive.” –Acts 20:35

“We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.” –Winston Churchill

Life is an echo—what you send out comes back.

- Unknown

There is a wonderful mythical law of nature that the three things we crave most in life—happiness, freedom, and peace of mind—are always attained by giving them to someone else.

- Peyton Conway March

Complete possession is proved only by giving. All you are unable to give possesses you.

- Andre Gide

No person was ever honored for what he received. Honor has been the reward for what he gave.

- Calvin Coolidge

Giving opens the way for receiving.

- Florence Scovel Shinn

"I have found that among its other benefits, giving liberates the soul of the giver." - Maya Angelou

"We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop." -- Mother Teresa

"A generous man will prosper; he who refreshes others will be refreshed." -- Proverbs 11:25

"Apart from the ballot box, philanthropy presents the one opportunity the individual has to express his meaningful choice over the direction in which our society will progress." -- George G. Kirstein

======

“This country will not be a good place for any of us to live in unless we make it a good place for all of us to live in.” –Theodore Roosevelt

“Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see the shadows.” –Helen Keller

“The function of an ideal is not to be realized but, like that of the North Star, to serve as a guiding point.” –Edward Abbey

“Each time someone stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope.” –Robert F. Kennedy

“To have made even one person’s life a little better, that is to succeed.” –Henry David Thoreau

What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult for each other.

- George Eliot

“The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.” –Gandhi

“It is every man’s obligation to put back into the world at least the equivalent of what he takes out of it.” –Albert Einstein

“True charity is the desire to be useful to others without thought of recompense” –Emanuel Swedenborg

“I deem it the duty of every man to devote a certain portion of his income for charitable purposes; and that it is his further duty to see it so applied and to do the most good for which it is capable.” –Thomas Jefferson

“If you haven’t go charity in your heart, you have the worst kind of heat trouble.” –Bob Hope

“Be generous and you will be prosperous,

Help others and you will be helped.” –Proverbs 11:25

“Reach high

For the stars lie hidden in your soul.

Dream Deep

For every dream precedes the goal.” –Pamela Vaull Star

I don’t know what your destiny will be, but one thing I do know: the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who have sought and found how to serve.

- Albert Schweitzer

If you want happiness for an hour, take a nap.

If you want happiness for a day, go fishing.

If you want happiness for a year, inherit a fortune.

If you want happiness for a lifetime, help somebody.

- Chinese proverb

Wherever there is a human being, there is an opportunity for kindness.

- Seneca

A single act of kindness throws out roots in all directions, and the roots spring up and make new trees. The greatest work that kindness does to others is that it makes them kind themselves.

- Lawrence G. Lovasik

-----

Here's a couple I like:

Kindness in words creates confidence. Kindness in thinking creates

profoundness. Kindness in giving creates love. Lao Tzu

In nothing do men more nearly approach the gods than in doing good to their

fellow men. Cicero

To keep a lamp burning we have to keep putting oil in it. Mother Theresa

Dick Kellogg

Future Focus

925-820-9238

www.futurefocus.net

"No person was ever honored for what he received. Honor has been the reward

for what he gave." Calvin Coolidge

---------------

My favorite mantra is

Action precedes funding

Planning precedes action.

Best,

Don

Donald A. Griesmann, Esq. (NJ)

Fairport NY

Don Griesmann's Grant Opportunities

_http://charitychannel.com/enewsletters/dggo/_

(http://charitychannel.com/enewsletters/dggo/)

------------------

My favorite quotes:

"Fundraiser, ask me what I care about . . . before you tell me what you care about". - PhilanthropyNow interviewee

"Treat me like a partner in caring . . . not a walking wallet." - PhilanthropyNow interviewee

Charles Bernard Maclean

HYPERLINK "http://www.philanthropynow.com"www.philanthropynow.com

----------

There are lots of great quotes, but the following is my favorite because it demonstrates that ours is a time-less endeavor:

Anyone ... can give away money or spend it; but to do all this to the right person, to the right extent, at the right time, for the right reason, and in the right way, is no longer something easy that anyone can do. It is for this reason that good conduct in such matters is rare, praiseworthy, and noble.

-- Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, circa 300 BC

_________________

Joel Preston

Joel Preston

Vice President, Major Gifts

March of Dimes

1919 Fifth St.

Berkeley, CA 94710

914.997-4584 Direct Office

510.849-3151 Fax

510.849-3150 Local Office

___________________________

-----------

I'm partial to the story about the pig and the hen wanting to do

something nice for the farmer.

The hen says to the pig, "Let's give him a nice breakfast. I'll

supply the eggs, and you can supply the bacon. That's fair."

The pig says, "Wait a minute! Eggs are a contribution. Bacon is a

COMMITMENT!"

Michael L. Wyland

Sumption & Wyland

818 South Hawthorne Avenue

Sioux Falls, SD 57104-4537

(605) 336-0244

(605) 336-0275 (FAX)

(888) 4-SUMPTION (toll-free)

[email protected]

----

Cordell Dick, CPA

Favorite Fund Raising Quotes:

By Harold Seymour in Designs for Fund-Raising

“Do not ask for money. Do ask for a better laboratory, a better dormitory, better equipment…Talk about the ‘something’, not about money.”

–Harold J. Seymour

“Nobody ever buys a Buick just because General Motors needs the money.”


“Spontaneity works best when it is well planned”


“It wasn’t raining when Noah started building the ark.”


mailto:[email protected]

“Sell the opportunities and not the deficiencies, never forgetting that money flows to promising programs and not to needy institutions.”


“Most people are interested in what a gadget looks like and what it does, and couldn’t care less about what makes it go.”


“In any field of activity, the leaders are indeed rare—never more than 5 per cent of any group. About 25 or 30 per cent of the total is the key group best described as responsible.

Then come the merely responsive, that major group that will probably respond in varying degrees if all the portents and pressures are about right. Finally, at the bottom is the inert fifth. It can rarely even make up its mind about anything. Well earned here would be the epitaph, ‘He could always be counted upon to be unreliable.’”


“Every individual needs to feel that he is a worthwhile member of a worthwhile group.”


“There can hardly be any stronger motivation for supporting a group or cause than simple pride of association.”


“The usual trouble with volunteers is not killing them with overwork, but simply boring them to death.”


“At best, with few exceptions, people don’t pay close or careful attention to anything.”


“If you want to persuade anyone, you can’t afford to be more than 85 per cent right.”


“It is a sterile gambit indeed to tell prospective donors that they owe the institution something because service to them was rendered at less than cost.”


“Other things being equal, the people can always fashion in their own hearts a far better rationale for their support than any of us could ever devise from any long parade of facts and figures.”


“Most of the people are very wonderful indeed, they almost always wish to do the right thing, and their ultimate performance, when boldly challenged and confidently led, is usually far better than we have any right to expect. Study them and treat them well, for you need them more than money.”


“Giving is prompted emotionally and then rationalized.”


“Those who remember the least will be the last to confess it and the first to resent their predicament.”


“What you do ahead of time is what counts most.”


“No cow will let down her milk in response to a letter or a telephone call. You have got to sit down beside her and go to work.”


“The best slogan I ever heard of was used in Dayton when they ran a campaign to repair the ravages of the 1913 flood: ‘Remember what you promised when you were up in the attic.’”


“There is no use waiting for your ship to come in if you haven’t sent out any ships”


“You don’t make a pickle by squirting vinegar at a cucumber, it has to soak awhile.”


“Being right is not enough—you have to be believed, and without causing irritation.”


“Never tell the donor what to do or how much to give; content yourself always with the expression of hope that he might give at such and such a level.”


------

Quotes:

"What we have done for ourselves alone dies with us; what we have done for others and the world remains and is immortal." Albert Pike

Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed. -- Booker T. Washington

"You can't direct the wind, but you can adjust your sails." - Unknown

"If a man empties his purse into his head, no man can take it away from him. An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest." – Benjamin Franklin

"If someone is going down the wrong road, he doesn't need motivation to speed him up. What he needs is education to turn him around." -- Jim Rohn

"Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got a hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations." - George Bernard Shaw

"Life is what we make it. Always has been, always will be." – Grandma Moses

"Man's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions." - Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

"When looking back, usually I'm more sorry for the things I didn't do than for the things I shouldn't have done." -- Malcolm Forbes

Live to learn and you will learn to live. - Portuguese Proverb

Withhold not good from them to whom it is due, when it is in the power of thine hand to do it. -The Bible, Proverbs 3:27

Life is a magic vase filled to the brim; so made that you cannot dip into it nor draw from it; but it overflows into the hand that drops treasures into it - drop in malice and it overflows hate; drop in charity and it overflows love. - John Ruskin

There was never a person who did anything worth doing that did not receive more than he gave.- Henry Ward Beecher

“The truth of the matter is that you always know the right thing to do. The hard part is doing it.” -- General H. Norman Schwarzkopf

Vision is the art of seeing things invisible to others. - -Jonathon Swift

Douglas M. Lawson, Ph.D., renowned fundraising consultant, said this in a particularly appropriate fashion: "In a world filled with violence, hatred, and suspicion, giving is an expression of faith, trust, and concern."

"I've always felt that when people hold their hands out to people who have less then they do, they become the beneficiaries - intellectually, spiritually or materially." --Paul Newman

fundraising quotes

Business