PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE
Happy New Year, Friends!
Are you ready for Super Bowl Sunday? ADO kicked off our football season with the January session on “Getting Your Board to Embrace Fund Development.” We had 75 roaring fans in attendance as speaker Laura Goodwin led us down the field for our first touchdown.
Our very own board member Hillary Millman is taking the snap from Center on February 13th with her session, “I Just Called to Say I Love You: Best Practices for Donor Communications.” There is no doubt that Hillary will lead us to another touchdown!
ADO is preparing for our halftime show on March 6th with our annual Philanthropy Awards Breakfast at Abigail Kirsch. This promises to our best awards breakfast ever. We are pleased to be recognizing some Hall of Fame caliber winners.
The 2nd Half of the season starts on April 10th with a panel discussion on “Securing Corporate Sponsorships.” Our team is diligently studying our playbook so we can work our way down the field for yet another touchdown.
We wrap up our victorious season with our May 8th lunch on “Preventing & Overcoming Burnout” and culminate our winning season with the Summer Networking Event in June.
ADO is always looking for new members to join our winning team. Please mark your calendars for our events and we look forward to seeing you very soon!
Enjoy the Game!!
Adam Kintish, Board President
WELCOME NEW MEMBERS
ADO would like to thank the following individuals for taking the leap and joining our organization. Some of you are new to ADO, others have found value in participating in past programs. Welcome, and we look forward to getting to know you better in the coming year!
Barbara Cervoni - Support Connection, Inc.
Donvil Collins - VeeKast
Sally Corbett-Turco - Stepping Stones Foundation
Jennifer Geider - Planned Parenthood Hudson Peconic
Victoria Jimpson-Fludd - FAOS / Yonkers Philharmonic Orchestra
Rosanne Lana - Lagond Music School
Dianne Lloyd - Too Young to Wed
Sharon Masciovecchio - Aisling Irish Community Center
Mary Theresa McCombe - Hearts to Homes Furnishings
Robert Miss - Strategic Management Exchange
Maureen Natkin - Westhab, Inc.
Ann Paul - Westmoreland Sanctuary
Jenifer Ross - Greyston
Sabrina Toback - New Rochelle Fund for Educational Excellence
Adrienne Vogel - Student Advocacy
Marjorie Weintraub - Gilda's Club Westchester
PROGRAMS
We’ve had a full house at the last three workshops; Rebecca Snyder in November talking about prospect research, Betsy Steward talking about major gifts in December, and Laura Goodwin in January talking about encouraging board members to embrace their role as fundraisers.
If you missed any of these workshops, don’t despair! ADO members can access slides from past presentations on the Member Area of our website at any time (requires a login)!
Don’t miss these fabulous upcoming events:
February 13, 2019 - I Just Called to Say I Love You: Best Practices for Donor Communications
March 6, 2019 – Philanthropy Awards Breakfast
April 10, 2019 – PANEL DISCUSSION: Securing Corporate Sponsorships
PHILANTHROPY AWARDS BREAKFAST
The Philanthropy Awards Breakfast is just 5 weeks away, on March 6th! We have a fantastic slate of honorees this year, along with some great sponsorship opportunities. Special thanks to Jill Singer of Jill Singer Graphics for doing a terrific job designing the various event-related materials.
Please join us in congratulating this year’s honorees:
OUTSTANDING BOARD
African American Men of Westchester
COMMUNITY PARTNER
Andrew Dieckman, Executive Printing
FUNDRAISING PROFESSIONAL
Tom Gabriel, Legal Services of the Hudson Valley
PHILANTHROPIST
Sue Greene Fuirst
Co-Founder, Spiral Giving
Board Chair, Open Door Foundation
YOUTH IN PHILANTHROPY
Noah Weber, Athletes vs. Crohn’s
REGISTER ONLINE
Check out these photos from last year's breakfast.
It's sure to be a great event!
NEW EDUCATIONAL RESOURCE
ADO is here to help you keep up with nonprofit trends and best practices AND help you unclutter your inbox at the same time! In January, we introduced a personalized weekly nonprofit industry newsbrief that collates relevant industry articles and blogs from nearly 100 sources around the web. With the help of artificial intelligence, the more you interact with the content the more personalized it will become. We are delighted to pilot this new and exciting educational resource. Have you read yours yet? Let us know what you think!
HOW IT ALL BEGAN
In January Executive Director Julie Sootin had the opportunity to sit down for lunch with Peter Gallagher, one of the founders of ADO nearly 40 years ago. It all began in the summer of 1980 when six development directors started meeting regularly at the Bengal Tiger in White Plains to chat about their agencies and fundraising issues. The group quickly recognized the need for an organization in Westchester that would promote the field of fundraising and support its fundraisers. Peter gives credit for the original idea to Ed Steward who, it turns out, is the late father-in-law of our own Betsy Steward, ADO member and our featured speaker in December!
Peter left Julie with a little memento of his days on the board, a marble paperweight that ADO used to present to each speaker.
WHAT'S ON YOUR BOOKSHELF?
The War for Fundraising Talent by Jason Lewis
An honest yet hopeful critique of professional fundraising, this book is intended especially for small shops that find it difficult to consistently achieve their fundraising goals. These organizations are notorious for rapid turnover and high donor attrition which are merely side effects of a much larger problem. This inter-sector conflict will not be won by those organizations who continue to mistakenly consider their scarcest resource to be donors with dollars. After years, if not decades, of obsessively accumulating new donors, most organizations have more than enough donors to keep them busy for quite some time. Those willing to part ways with this time-worn paradigm will discover how to retain more of the talent they already have and empower their new recruits with an environment where fundraising professionals can achieve mastery and find meaning in their work.
Jason Lewis was kind enough to provide attendees at ADO’s January workshop with a copy of his thought provoking new book. Jason is clearly on a mission to ensure that organizations have a shared understanding of how fundraising REALLY works, and that fundraising professionals are recognized and admired for doing meaningful work!
Click HERE to learn more.
Have you read a good fundraising book lately that you want to recommend? Let us know!
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
OFFICERS
ADAM KINTISH, President
akintish@aol.com
AMY PRICE, Vice President
GallopNYC
amyprice717@gmail.com
MICHELLE A. NICHOLAS, Treasurer
The Nico Consulting, Inc.
mnicholas@thenicoconsulting.com
ANN FABRIZIO, Secretary
ArtsWestchester
afabrizio@artswestchester.org
MEMBERS
KEVIN COOK
Westchester Medical Center/Maria Fareri Children’s Hospital
kevin.cook@wmchealth.org
LAURA DEBUYS
The Picture House Regional Film Center
laura@thepicturehouse.org
MARISSA MADONIA
Westchester Parks Foundation
marissa@thewpf.org
HILLARY MILLMAN
In Better Words
hillary@inbetterwords.com
HEIDI SIESFELD
Pro Bono Partnership
hsiesfeld@probonopartner.org
JILL SINGER
Jill Singer Graphics
jill@jillsingergraphics.com
MONICA SPEARS
Girl Scouts Heart of the Hudson
mspears@girlscoutshh.org
BRENDA WILKIN
Wilkin Consulting Group
brendawilkin123@gmail.com
