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The Black Swan: Practical Advice In Uncertain Times

By Mary Moss. Do you know the phrase “black swan” – a rare, unpredicted occurrence with widespread consequences? It was popularized in a book by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, published around the time Susan and I started our business just before the recession of 2008. Our firm has faced extreme uncertainty in nonprofit management and fundraising before, and 12 years later we can offer advice and experience to help you navigate the rough waters of today’s black swan: coronavirus. Clients are implementing this advice already, and we believe it is helping. Nonprofit Management 1.  Stay calm and be flexible. As a nonprofit leader, you need to instill confidence in others that your next steps are thoughtful and informed. This is an evolving situation; listen to the news, stay informed, and do the next right thing. Be ready to [...]

2020-03-30T20:58:05+00:00March 12th, 2020|All Posts, From The Partners, Special Topics|
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Building Trust with Donors

By Susan Ross. Successful nonprofit leadership demands fundraising capability. Subject matter expertise and passion for the cause remain important parts of the nonprofit skill set, but leaders know it takes money to live into an ambitious mission. The best professionals build relationships that make clients, donors, staff, and others value and trust your role in their lives. We see this expectation in our searches for executive directors and development officers, where Boards are clearly looking for a proven record of fundraising success. What does that really mean? More than an impressive dollar total, it should recognize a pattern of actions and related results that meet the agreed upon goals. Certainly, a bit of luck may make an unexpected gift land in your lap, but more often the luckiest people are the ones who work the hardest, as [...]

2020-03-30T21:28:55+00:00March 2nd, 2020|All Posts, From The Partners|
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Staffing Services

Did you know there are 3.1 million temporary and contract employees in the staffing industry on any given day? m+r interim solutions is proud to match highly skilled nonprofit professionals with clients across the Triangle. Our affiliate contractors are highly qualified, experienced nonprofit professionals who work as interim members of a client’s staff. moss+ross develops the general scope of work and contract with the client, manages the client relationship, and supports the affiliate’s work. Current clients include: Community Music School, Event Support Compass Center for Women & Families, Campaign Support Durham Collaborative to End Family Homelessness, Grant Writing Habitat for Humanity of Wake County, Database Support Inter-Faith Food Shuttle, CEO Local Start Dental, Development Officer MedServe, Managing Director Musical Empowerment, Development Officer North Carolina Advocates for Justice, Development Officer North Carolina Medical Society, Database Support North Carolina School [...]

2020-03-30T21:31:03+00:00March 2nd, 2020|All Posts, Staffing|
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Welcome to Our New Website!

By Jeanne Murray. moss+ross has served nearly 200 clients, grown to 20+ associates, and offers a suite of services to nonprofits, including temporary staffing through m+r interim solutions. As we begin our second decade, we have launched a robust new website commensurate with the powerful services offered by the firm. Beyond excitedly announcing “hey, look what we did!” we also want to share our process. We used the same approach to our internal project that we do in communications counsel with clients. In our consulting engagements, we advise clients on goal setting, strategic messaging, and integrated communications planning. We followed our own advice as we revised the website: Setting Goals: The impetus for the upgrade was, frankly, modernity! The previous site was seven years old, which is light years in web technology, and as we took a [...]

2020-03-30T21:32:13+00:00March 2nd, 2020|All Posts, Team Expertise|
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Recent Executive Search Results

We are pleased to announce the conclusion of recent Executive Searches. The Eno River Association has hired Jessica B. Sheffield as its new Executive Director. Sheffield comes to the Eno River Association after eleven years as the Program Coordinator at Duke University's Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions. Voices Together has hired John Mitterling as its new Director of Development. Mitterling brings more than 30 years of fundraising experience having served most recently as the Senior Director of Development at MDC in Durham. NC State College of Agriculture and Life Sciences has hired Dinah Schuster as its new Senior Director of Development, Plant Sciences Initiative. Schuster has more than twenty years of experience in higher education advancement (most recently in development roles at Louisiana State University). For more information about our active job searches, please visit Jobs. [...]

2020-02-21T18:03:32+00:00February 6th, 2020|All Posts, Staffing|
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Five Ways to Become a More Effective Major Gifts Officer

By Elizabeth Hopkins.  For many major gift officers, summer is the opportunity to take stock of the success and challenges of the previous fiscal year and make resolutions for the new year. The most successful gift officers embrace prospect planning to ensure they are getting out of the office to find, cultivate and solicit the best prospects. If you are at your desk more than you are out, you are missing opportunities. Meetings, database entry deadlines, reports, and proposal writing can tie you down to your desk, preventing you from your primary responsibility of engaging prospects and donors in major gift conversations. Here are five suggestions to help you focus your work to become a more efficient, effective, and productive major gifts officer. 1. Create a personal annual development plan that includes both fiscal-year fundraising goals and engagement goals. Include [...]

2020-03-30T21:33:29+00:00January 30th, 2020|All Posts, Fundraising Counsel, Team Expertise|
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The Room Where It Happens

By Mary Moss. If you’ve seen Hamilton, you know that the “Room Where it Happens” means more than just clever lyrics and melody. History is made by having the right people in the room, people whose actions and commitment will change everything. Alexander Hamilton was in the room, and as they say, the rest is history. Who is in your room? As staff, do you have the right people in your room? As board or committee members, do you have the right volunteers in your room? This past month has been an extraordinary one for some moss+ross clients. To name only a few:  * SECU Family House and Oak City Cares celebrated successful campaign conclusions * Healing Transitions and Durham Tech met huge milestones in their campaigns * Voices Together hired a Director of Development and Eno [...]

2020-02-28T13:38:34+00:00January 14th, 2020|All Posts, Campaign Counsel, Client Highlights, From The Partners, Strategic Planning|
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Engaging Your Board in Foundation Grant Seeking

By Kathryn Williams. Family foundations comprise the largest segment of the private foundation sector, a sector that grew by an estimated 7.3% to $75.86 billion last year, according to Giving USA 2019: The Annual Report on Philanthropy for the Year 2018. Foundation giving represented 18% of all 2018 charitable dollars, which is unprecedented, both for the dollar amount and for the share of total giving. Approaching a family foundation requires a personal connection. You can’t just send in an unsolicited letter of inquiry or grant request; no one will read it. Your Board may have the ability to positively influence the grant process. Identify connections among your Board members. Someone on your Board may have a relationship with a funder that can open doors. Gather as much information as you can about the foundation and its staff [...]

2020-02-28T13:40:43+00:00January 14th, 2020|All Posts, Fundraising Counsel, Team Expertise|
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The Extraordinary Importance of Ordinary Donors

By Susan Ross. All donors, large and small, play an important role in charitable giving, yet recent data show that about half of US families today are not giving at all, and those that do are giving less than they did 15 years ago. Research from the Lilly School of Philanthropy at Indiana University shows that this is true across the board, among all organizations. The good news is that most nonprofit organizations are meeting fundraising goals, thanks to larger gifts from fewer donors. Pursuing the extraordinary opportunity means focusing on major gifts. But what about the “ordinary” – the small or medium-sized gift? The stakes are high: nonprofit independence and sustainability may be jeopardized when a few very generous, very wealthy donors have all the voice and clout. Such donors usually do not want all that responsibility [...]

2020-02-28T17:51:12+00:00August 7th, 2019|All Posts, Campaign Counsel, From The Partners, Fundraising Counsel|
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Recipe for Nonprofit Success: Three Essential Ingredients

By Mary Moss. Imagine your organization has stopped operation. Imagine funds have run out. Imagine the population your mission supports cannot be served. Everything stops. Imagine the despair. For the leaders at Community Music School (CMS) in Raleigh, this was reality, not imagination, and on the front page of the News & Observer a few years ago. Fast forward to today, where CMS is thriving, growing, adapting, and serving more students as it lives into its mission To Create Brighter Futures Through Music. Fundraising numbers are way up, teachers are being recognized in myriad ways, and more students than ever are clamoring to see their brand new facility located at Longleaf School of the Arts in Southeast Raleigh. How did this extraordinary state of affairs turn around? CMS leaders concentrated on three key ingredients. This is a simple recipe, [...]

2020-02-28T17:55:16+00:00June 4th, 2019|All Posts, From The Partners, Fundraising Counsel, Staffing, Strategic Planning|
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