Obama – world's greatest fundraiser?
Howard Lake | 3 November 2008 | Blogs
The speed and duration of Obama’s fundraising has staggered commentators around the world. Raising funds in small quantities from huge numbers of US voters defies previous rules of US election fundraising.
So what can we learn from this? If you look simply at his YouTube videos I think the answer and lesson becomes apparent. We often talk about the importance of passion in fundraising and how it drives relationships – but now something has trumped passion and that is inspiration.
Inspiration to my mind is greater than passion, though passion is an essential component. It is more powerful than passion, because it lifts people to share and believe in the inspirer’s vision.
Inspiration is what our CEOs should be about – lifting our organisations by inspiring support; but how often does this happen? Good leaders are inspiring and that is a key difference between them and competent managers. Leaders set the far horizons and inspire us to believe our organisations can go there. Let’s put a tick in the essential column of our CEOs person spec and accept nothing less.
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.