Welcome to the Eight Principles of Sustainable Fundraising®

The Eight Principles of Sustainable Fundraising®

are the natural laws which govern all philanthropy

—whether or not you’re aware of them.

Always operating,

The Eight Principles of Sustainable Fundraising

defines what works and what doesn’t.

By starting with the Principles,

the choice of methods becomes clear and simple.

Larry C Johnson, Founder, The Eight Principles

Larry Johnson, founded The Eight Principles™, believing in the simple, the practical and the joyful.

He is the author of the award-winning book, The Eight Principles of Sustainable Fundraising, and is named to the top 15 fundraising consultants in the US and Canada by the Wall Street Business Network.  The Association of Fundraising Professionals named Larry Outstanding Development Executive of 2010.

Larry’s thirty-year career spans both program development and capital fundraising.  After serving with the nation’s leading consultancy, he served four institutions of higher learning as chief advancement officer and has led successful capital funding efforts which were local, regional and national in scope with objectives ranging from $650K to $200M.

He serves on both nonprofit and corporate boards including the advisory council of The Carter Center, the philanthropy of the 39^th President of the United States.

Larry has coached the staff and volunteers of hundreds of nonprofit organizations in the United States, Canada and Great Britain.

THE EIGHT PRINCIPLES WAY™

FUNDRAISING MADE SIMPLE ™

WE GIVE YOU THE WINNING MIND SET

• We provide you with the tools and training that put you on the path to sustained, growing fundraising success.

We Show You How to Think in New Ways Then Act Appropriately.

• We start with our fundraising road map, the Four Corners Profile™. It gives your leadership a clear-eyed view of where your organization currently stands.

You Learn Fundraising Success is Ninety Percent Thinking, Ten Percent Doing.

• We align your organization’s thinking with the delivery of one or more of our live, interactive workshops. Created for adults with high levels of participation, activity and accountability.

You Discover New Revenue Streams and Build the Ones You Have.

• When you adopt The Eight Principles Way™, you deepen support among your supporters while discovering new ones.
  Your fundraising costs—how much you’re spending to raise a dollar—drop dramatically.

Fundraising Becomes a Joy.

• The pit in your stomach that comes when someone says “it’s time to fundraise,” goes away. Your real fundraising potential is now in sight.

You Make Success Permanent.

• By putting The Eight Principles® inside your organization. Conventional training is “outside intervention.” Whether it’s a trainer coming to you or sending your staff a conference. Once and done. Good, as far as it goes.
• With our Train-the-Trainer program, we train YOUR in-house facilitators to deliver The Eight Principles® training to your leadership, staff and volunteers all the time—anytime. Makes your understanding permanent and cost effective.

HOW WE’RE DIFFERENT

• We’re the premium brand. We make no apologies. No one does it like we do. You discover what works all the time, every time, not just some of the time.
• We make it simple. We don’t use jargon or overwhelm you with data. We know simple but sophisticated is always best.
• We don’t promote one-size-fits-all methods or the trendy technique of the month. We know you’re different.
• We’re not beholden to “conventional” thinking. We know that although conventional approaches raise money, they never achieve your full potential.
• We show you the elephant in the room—fundraising costs. The purveyors of packaged “systems”, techniques of the day and quick fixes never mention the elephant. How much you spend relative to what you get. Costs can exceed seventy-five cents of every dollar or more. Much of what you raise goes to support your overhead—not your mission.
• We don’t use “systems” that require countless hours of thankless, mind-numbing labor delivering repetitive, bottom-feeding “ask events” which result in staff and board burnout—while viewing donors as “ripened fruit.” We know simply doing more of what you’re doing is not the route to sustainability or scale.
• We know the philanthropic market is one of abundance, not scarcity. We’re not even close to tapping what’s available. This one fact stunts many, many fundraising programs. You’re limited only by the degree you engage potential investors.