My Blog
Building Relationships with Donors
In the world of fundraising, it's tempting to think of applications and proposals as purely transactional. But the truth is, relationships matter just as much as numbers. When you’re building partnerships with donors, remember: real, lasting support is rooted in trust and mutual understanding. Donors aren’t faceless funding machines. Behind [...]
The Real People Behind Donor Organisations
It’s easy to think of donors as large institutions, with rigid guidelines and layers of bureaucracy. But at the end of the day, donors are real people who care about creating impact. They’re just like you: driven by passion, motivated by purpose, and eager to see real change. When preparing [...]
Don’t Submit a Faceless Piece of Paper
Recently we’ve been talking about donors and how they are all different, as well as the importance of diversifying funding, especially in the light of the current world changes. Today I want to talk about “faceless pieces of paper”. Whether it’s a government department or a foreign multi-lateral funding agency, [...]
Know your donor: National Government Departments
Getting funding from National Government Departments can be a valuable and often overlooked source of support for NPOs—especially if you're addressing education, youth, health, food security, safety, or social development. All of these Departments offer different opportunities, including subsidies, program funding, capacity-building grants and others. Here’s a practical guide to [...]
Know your Donor – Meet the Individual
In our last blog on “Know Your Donor”, we’re going to talk about the Individual Donor. When it comes to individual donors, there are several types you can engage, each with different motivations, giving capacities and ways to connect. Here's a quick breakdown to help you understand and tailor your [...]
Know your donor: Corporates
In our series “Know your Donor”, we’ve covered Multilateral Grantmaking Organisations, Foreign Governments and Foundations. Today we are going to talk about corporations. In the context of NPO (non-profit organisation), giving a "corporate" refers to a for-profit company that donates resources, such as money, goods, or services, to support the [...]
Know your donor: Foundations
We’re continuing with our deep dive into the different types of donors, where they get their funding from and how they operate. We’ve covered Multilateral Grantmaking Organisations and Foreign Governments. Today, I’d like to introduce you to Foundations. What is a Foundation? A Foundation is a type of nonprofit organisation, [...]
Meet a donor: Foreign Governments
We’re talking about the different types of donors, where they get their funding from and how they operate. In my last blog we talked about Multilateral Grantmaking Organisations. Today I’d like to introduce you to Foreign Governments. Definition of a Foreign Government (as a Funder for NPOs) A foreign government is a [...]
The Multilateral Grantmaking Organisation
In my last blog post, I talked about why it’s important for organizations to have different ways of bringing in money, especially as donor support changes over time and major world changes impact funding. Donors, like people, are all different. In my next couple of blog posts, we’re going to [...]
Funding Diversification is Even More Essential These Days!
Following on from the work stop on US funding and the removal of American aid to South Africa, amongst other sudden changes over the last few months, it has become abundantly clear that an organisation cannot rely on any one particular donor’s funds for the sustainability of the organisation. The [...]
Why critical policies can be such a headache!
Let’s be honest—writing policies is no one’s idea of fun. Sitting down to decide rules and procedures for an entire organisation is time-consuming and not particularly exciting. It requires thinking through every possible situation and accounting for all the “what-ifs.” More often than not, it’s the finance or admin team [...]
Turning Conflict into Progress: The Power of Healthy Disagreements in Non-Profits
As a leader in a non-profit, you may instinctively want to avoid conflict, seeing it as a disruption to your team’s harmony. However, I want to challenge that mindset. Conflict, when managed well, can actually be a powerful tool for growth and progress in your organisation. It’s important to recognise [...]
One Bad Apple Spoils the Bunch
Have you ever hired someone new and noticed that the whole vibe of the organisation shifts? It’s hard to pinpoint at first, but something just feels off. People who used to love coming to work seem less enthusiastic, and suddenly the team doesn’t feel as cohesive. At first, you might [...]
Planning for 2025: Learning from the Past, Preparing for the Future
As we approach the final quarter of the year, it's time for us to start thinking about the plans for 2025. While planning is often seen as a forward-looking task, the most effective strategies are those that learn from the past. By reflecting on what worked and what didn’t in [...]
Do you know what position you play?
When writing these blogs, I usually like to take a lesson out of what's happening in my life at the moment. I've just watched my son play in a field hockey match. He plays striker, which is all about positioning (the theme for this month 😊). Positioning is about being [...]
Running The Risk of Doing Nothing
I’ve taken forever to write this blog because I didn’t know what to say. Risk is so boring! Why did I choose this topic as the focus for the month! Probably because it is such an important aspect of the sustainability of an organization. We unconsciously deal with risk every [...]
Success measures for impact!
I spent the weekend watching my son play field hockey. And I began to wonder, how do we quantify success in school hockey. Let’s be clear here, he doesn't play for the A team, there are more losses than wins! We can't really quantify success as scoring the most goals. [...]
Laser focus for greatest impact
Today I took my teenage son to Comic Con. For those of you who don’t know, it is a convention for video gamers, board gamers, anime enthusiasts, cartoon enjoyers, cos-players, comic book readers and many other people who haven’t completely grown up yet. It had a big impact – and [...]
Leading with the individual in mind
It is the era of the ‘great resignation’ and the ‘great never applying in the first place’, particularly in the USA, but felt all over the world. Millennials, Gen Y, Gen Z and all the other letters of the alphabet have far more options when it comes to personal income [...]
The right people make all the difference
I was reminded yet again over the last few months how important it is to get the right people for the job. Competent people at the level that you need make all the difference. As you grow as an organization what worked before doesn’t always work anymore. You need staff [...]
Effective Communication – What are you trying to say?
Last blog I spoke about the need to repeat important information to make sure it sticks, is internalised and is actioned. Today I want to unpack the other C’s ineffective communication: Clear Comprehensive Concise Continuous (see the last blog) We all know that our communication should be simple and to [...]
Effective Communication – Rinse and Repeat
If you’ve known me for 5 minutes, you’ll know I like to talk! It’s how I learn, process information, and communicate most clearly. But I know that sometimes it’s important to distill information into text or video or a recording of some kind. People need to be able to refer [...]
The plan is the priority
This month’s theme is supposed to be about strategy but it’s already the end of the month! Where did the time go? I know for me it was sucked into the hole of my inbox after coming back from leave… catching up on what happened while I was away, extracting [...]
Change for the better
Change isn’t always a bad thing…. Recently I attended the farewell of the founder of an organisation. It was a bittersweet event, reflecting on all that has been achieved under his leadership while being very aware that he won’t be around next year. It is scary to consider a future [...]
Just Do It
I realized in writing the last blog (found here) that it’s not actually the decision that we struggle with as leaders. Deep down we know what needs to be done if we stop and listen to our gut. We try to rationalize things with a pros and cons list but [...]
Don’t delay tough decisions
Leadership is about having the courage to make hard decisions and live with the consequences. Today I had breakfast with a friend whose organization is closing its doors after many years of operation. That must have been a very hard decision to make but also a wise one. They took [...]
Parent yourself!
Welcome to my blog! I’m hoping to regularly (no guarantees!) share with you my thoughts, lessons I’ve learned, tips, processes, methodologies, and basically, my headspace. I hope that you will find some of it interesting, some of it useful and some of it shareable so that others can benefit from [...]
Michelle’s Birthday Bash
It's my birthday, let's celebrate! How do we celebrate birthdays? With friends and family, with the people we love, with the people who get us and have something in common with us. This year, I wanted to mark my birthday by celebrating it with people who are passionate about the [...]