Thought Leadership and the Olympics

Jay Love — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 17:24:00 GMT

Last Wednesday was a special day in San Francisco for a couple of reasons. I will mention the first one so those of you reading this blog know a little bit about me. The second reason is really the crux of this entry.

First, being in San Francisco last week afforded me the opportunity to spend Tuesday evening with my son Brad and his wife Elizabeth who live in the Rockridge section of Oakland.

The area is home to numerous wonderful ethnic eateries and we were able to visit their favorite Thai restaurant that evening. It is always fun to hear about their new careers of teaching and practicing law in San Francisco. Brad had been an Intern for eTapestry for a couple of the early years prior to falling in love with legal endeavors, especially intellectual property matters. Now he is working with several Silicon Valley tech firms in this area of the law and truly enjoys every day, even though many stretch to 14 or 15 hours in length.

Second, this particular Wednesday last week provided the second stop for the new Blackbaud "Thought Leadership" educational training series of seminars. See here for details on upcoming locations.

I arrived early and with ease since the location was literally next door to the BART Embarcadero stop. Numerous other attendees had obviously done the same in anticipation of the morning ahead. Before the morning session began in earnest, we were more than 100 individuals in size.

Whenever you bring more than 100 nonprofit professionals together, especially in such an energetic city as San Francisco, the side conversations and sharing of tips and ideas can be nearly as valuable as the education session itself. This was certainly the case last Wednesday, as I listened in on numerous discussions and debates. This process was fueled several times during the session because of the insertion of many small group discussions in the program. During those small group discussions, topics were debated and then the combined wisdom shared with the entire group. The result was additional current views for each key part of the subject matter being presented.

The educational content was outstanding, especially if the comments I heard from several attendees accurately reflect the opinion of the crowd. Education was truly the focus of the session since the amount of time mentioning Blackbaud’s outstanding family of products amounted to less than 3 minutes. My goodness, if you were checking one email message on your Treo, iPhone or Blackberry, you could have missed it altogether!

Once again, as has been the case so often over the years, I came away even more impressed with the fundraising professionals who serve this wonderful nonprofit sector that so many of us love. The thirst for knowledge and the dedication to training led my mind to make the connection and comparison with the attitudes and discipline of the many Olympic athletes we witnessed last week at the Beijing Olympics.

So many of the fundraising professionals I have had the pleasure of associating with for the last 24 years epitomize the Olympic spirit and dedication for constant training to improve themselves year after year. They realize that staying current means staying on top of their game and has a direct effect upon results desired for their daily efforts. It was neat to see such efforts come shining through like a Gold Medal again in San Francisco last Wednesday.

The Jay Love Blog : olympics

Thought Leadership and the Olympics