The Importance of the Fundraising Community
Chapter Leadership Brief
By Craig Shelley, CFRE
AFP-NYC Treasurer & Managing Director, Orr Group
Earlier this week AFP-NYC member, colleague and friend Thomas Moore, the Director of Individual Giving at New York Road Runners, posted on LinkedIn about the importance of being grounded in community right now and how he’s been grateful to find that in AFP-NYC. Thomas hit on exactly the value our chapter can and hopes to add during the COVID-19 pandemic and all the time.
AFP-NYC is designed to be a place where each of us as fundraisers can find our peers and learn, grow and commiserate. In all times and for all professions that’s important. But as fundraisers, which can be a lonely profession with many of us toiling in one-person development shops and all of us hearing no more than we hear yes, it is more important. Right now, when all of us are facing a circumstance none of us have ever faced before, it is more so.
The chapter is reacting and adapting as quick as we can to provide the support and camaraderie that has always been our hallmark in new ways. In the coming weeks our professional advancement programs will migrate online. Fundraising Day in New York will be offered in a new virtual format that will deliver great content while being more accessible and flexible than ever; this may prove to be an instance where we’ve allowed these challenges to help us find a better way than the way we’ve become accustomed to. We’ve also offered two free webinar discussions with our chapter officers. Each officer brings a diverse perspective and the feedback on these conversations has been positive as it has allowed fundraisers to access expertise and ask questions. Details will be forthcoming on a third session like this which will be held on Monday, May 11; I hope you’ll join us and we remain committed to offering this forum to share ideas for as long as the crisis persists and/or there is interest.
If you have other suggestions for how the chapter can meet your needs as a fundraiser right now or just want to talk, please feel free to reach out to me at cshelley@orrgroup.com. Together we’ll get through this.