We will not build better advancement operations…

– or sustain fundraising success
– or build stronger cultures of philanthropy
– or renew the philanthropic spirit

…if we do not grasp one increasingly inexorable fact of life:

People will not give fully of themselves – neither their time, talent, nor treasure – to support any effort or initiative that has not sought and incorporated their voice, beliefs, and experiences.

That means we can’t expect:

• Advancement professionals to abide by performance measures or to pursue organizational objectives they haven’t helped to shape
• Volunteers to give of their time if they haven’t been allowed to tell us the what their talents are and how they can be put to their highest and best use
• Donors to give generously to initiatives that haven’t helped conceive or opine on

We can no longer cook up ideas in splendid isolation and spring them on the unsuspecting. We have to master the warp and weft of co-creation.

That means leaders must become master weavers.

Advancement leaders must not force the talent at their disposal into the boxes of an org chart; they must find the golden threads of talent each person offers and weave them into a complementary whole.

Organizational leaders must seek out constituents for their talent and weave very different threads of insight into a collective hope that will all but obviate the need to ask.

We have lost too many advancement staff and too many donors, or stultified their potential for the same reason – because we thought our brainchildren were more worthy than theirs.

Let us remind ourselves of the wisdom of Ralph Ellison, who said we “are woven of many strands” and that our destiny is to be “one but many, many but one.”

It’s what master weavers do. We need them in fundraising, philanthropy, and every level of society.