Generally, with the exception of Rocco Palma’s Whispers in the Loggia, I dislike blogs.

So, you may ask,

“Why this Blog?”

For the majority of my forty six years, I have been a development officer. I learned my trade in public and private institutions of higher education. My skills were honed through the application of abundant professional development resources amid large development teams that encouraged the sharing of ideas.

My experience as a diocesan development director, although rich and rewarding, was vastly different from my experience in higher education.

My staff was considerably smaller. I lacked the sophisticated technical tools that I had relied upon in previous positions. Resources for gift cultivation and solicitation were not as abundant.
As a result of these limitations, I found myself “doing” more than I was “planning”.

More importantly, because I was so busy “doing”, I found that I had little time to “share” with my colleagues.

Conversation is largely an activity of leisure and I found that I lacked the time to benchmark my current practice and to share best development practice with my colleagues.

So, you may ask again

“Why this blog?”

I find that, in my current position, working with many diocesan development directors in the management of their annual appeals, I have no choice but to be intimately aware of best marketing and development practices. I am compelled to spend a great deal of time reading, benchmarking and researching emerging development practices; and, considering how such practices could be applied within a diocesan setting.

So, if I may, I would like to share what I have learned with you; and, hopefully through such sharing, create a dialogue around these issues.

I would encourage you to read and exhort you to discuss in order to create a lively environment that may, hopefully, enable all of us to be more successful in the critical work in which we are engaged.

Thanks. See you at the next post.