News/Blog

 

This is an excerpt of an article originally published on the Community-Centric Fundraising website

 

As a fundraiser, I’ve been to my share of “fancy” parties. Each time, I rummage through my closet trying to find the perfect outfit that will look sufficiently dressed up, professional, and that shows off my genderqueer style. 

 

I want to fit in. As a cisgender, white, queer person, I might look the part, but deep inside, I fear that people will judge me because I don’t come from wealth.

 

 

 

Vice President of Developement, DoSomething.org

 

As I woke up this morning, I was excited (and a bit nervous if I’m being honest) to be heading to Fundraising Day in New York for the first time in two years! DoSomething.org’s full Development department and CEO will be joining hundreds of our colleagues to soak in the inspirations, learnings and networking that FRDNY always delivers.

We lost a member of our AFP family last week, Michele Hall-Duncan, who served on our board as our
Secretary. We will be taking a moment of silence during the Penny Stoil Luncheon at Fundraising Day to remember Michele and her leadership in the
fundraising profession and the work she did and led at enCourage Kids Foundation. The board of AFP-NYC will be making a gift to enCourage Kids to honor Michele, please consider donating to this wonderful organization in her memory at https://encourage-kids.org/. We also would like to share the message from enCourage Kids with our readers:

 

I became a member of the AFP-NYC chapter in 1995, which was also the first year I attended Fundraising Day in New York. I’ve attended every year since and my involvement has deepened, as I went from an attendee to speaker, moderator, track chair, and program chair.  I was so excited and honored when I was asked to be Conference Chair in 2020.  We named the conference “Moving Forward….Together”, and we added representatives from our IDEA and Emerging Professionals groups to the Conference Steering Committee. Over several months, we worked to develop interesting sessions with dynamic, expert speakers. We’d even planned a delicious and fun luncheon program.  Then the world changed, and we had to quickly pivot to make the conference virtual.

 

President & CEO, Encourage Kids Foundation

 

On Wednesday, we will have our first in-person gala in two years. Fundraising events have been our bread and butter, therefore losing this particular revenue stream was devastating to our organization. Our staff was reduced by 60 percent and we had to reconfigure how we delivered our mission as well. When we passed the one-million dollar mark last week, our skeleton crew celebrated via Zoom and could not believe that we had hit our goal.

By Craig Shelley, CFRE, President-elect, AFP-NYC Chapter; Managing Director, Orr Group

 

I’m not sure if we’re in a lull between pandemic waves, onto some next phase of normalcy or are finally into the “new normal” we’ve all heard so much about.  Whatever this is, I know I’ve found the recent abundant opportunities I’ve had to see people in-person to be energizing.  Among other things it’s helped to remind me of the great potential and benefit our AFP chapter brings. We have so many opportunities for fundraisers to come together and now that we can do so live and in-person, I’d really encourage you to take advantage.