About Funding Guides LLC

LinkedIn Page: 

www.linkedin.com/in/lisa-m-french-554127a

With over three decades of experience in frontline fundraising and development leadership roles, Lisa has established herself as a trusted leader in the non-profit sector. Lisa has worked with a diverse range of organizations, including major research universities such as UW-Madison and UC San Diego, as well as nonprofits of various sizes. As the Founder of Funding Guides, she is passionate about supporting small to mid-sized U.S. nonprofits in various fields, ranging from international medical services, food providers, the arts and more. 

What inspired Lisa to create Funding Guides was a common trend she noticed whenever she started a new fundraising position. Regardless of the organization's size or level of sophistication, their fund development programs consistently underperformed in crucial areas. In addition, unless the organization was preparing for a capital campaign, there was often a lack of comprehensive analysis conducted across the entire fund development program. While non-profit organizations strictly adhere to the requirement to conduct rigorous financial audits each year, they often neglect to apply the same level of scrutiny to conducting an in-depth, comprehensive analysis of their fund development program.

Some of the other trends Lisa identified were: 

• Staff and leadership lacked the expertise and/or bandwidth to conduct an accurate, in-depth analysis of their fund development program
•  A recurring pattern of utilizing the same transactional methods to reach budgeted fundraising goals, often in a frantic manner
• Understaffed or improperly staffed fundraising depts.
• Development staff experiencing high levels of stress and burnout with little (or no) resources available to help them mitigate this stress 
• Retention rates of development staff were low, yet little (or no) effort was being put towards examining the root causes of this extremely costly dilemma.

Let us guide you on the path to creating the fund development program your organization needs in order to further advance its important mission.