As you launch a new project or ramp up something you’re already doing, there’s going to be money involved. Many folks dread this part, but we’re going to make it a lot easier for you — by shifting how you think about your role.
When you’re raising money, you are much more than a “fundraiser” … or a ceo (or trustee)-who-raises-money.
You are, in fact, an agent of change.
Surprised I’d say that? I’ll try to prove it to you in the next two minutes.
Here are three ways that you facilitate change:
1. When you decide how high your aspirations will be for your organization.
What, you say? You never made that decision?
Whether you’re conscious of it or not, you have a lot more to say about how high (or low) the sights are set for the people around you. Many times our ways are so subtle we don’t notice.
2. When you work to move the organization from its current state toward a desired future state.
That’s managing change — again, it’s happening regardless of how aware of it you are.
3. When you create the conditions for success — the success that will in turn, make possible the preferred future.
You do this by influencing the cultural norms in and around the organization, even by defining the organization’s reality.
These norms include the habits, attitudes and behavior of board and staff members — and especially their tacit, often unspoken belief in the worth of your institution or agency. And that belief in the organization’s worth is central to what you can achieve.
I hope these three ways are enough to get you started seeing yourself as a change agent.
Change management has come into its own as a field of practice — showing up on a big scale indeed.
When Barack Obama spoke of change in his campaign, he was so serious that, once elected, he quietly put together an advisory team of 29 leading behaviorists who specialize in change — including ones who urged during the campaign the message that a record turnout was expected for the election.
Why? Because they knew that people want to be part of something others are in on. It’s one of the tenets of change management: A behavior thought to be popular attracts more of that behavior.
While there are other lessons for us in the success of Obama’s campaign, the larger revelation is that “change agentry,” as a model and a discipline, is ready for us to benefit from — if we think of ourselves as agents of change.
Before I sign off, let me add this: If we’re going to see how much influence we can exert, we may be compelled at times to do things we don’t think we’re capable of … to use skills we don’t even think we have … to work with people we might at first feel less than comfortable with.
So yes, we will be asked to stretch, to draw on our courage, to grow as professionals and as people.
But if we do, then when everyone else thinks these are impossible times, we can think to ourselves, “I know something they don’t know. This will be easier than it looks.”
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