Canter Bridge

My friend ‘JT’ has written this brief book in order to present in narrative format the gist of his life-long work empowering non-profits through his firm DMA, Inc. If you are particularly skeptical of friends’ reviews (which you should be at least a little bit), you may wish to stop reading now.

You could sign for one of DMA’s two- or four-day seminars and get Jerry’s approach with concrete application to your own non-profit organization and its fundraising needs. That would be the Mercedes approach at a Toyota price.

Or you could read this book and work through its exercises for price more akin to that of, say, a Kia. Either way, you’ll benefit.

The author would be the first to declare that fund-raising is not rocket science. Rather, ‘relational development’ plays upon the key concepts that are familiar to DMA trainees: the need for relationships, identifying our prospects, qualifying our prospects, emotional vs. rational giving, bringing people into your house, tracking the development of relationships, turning activities into events, sustaining your constituents, etc. Twombly repeatedly encourages his seminar attendees that they already have the basic skills of fundraising, which are relational. It’s a matter of developing a system where those native interpersonal skills will serve the resource needs of their organization.

The uninspiring but pedagogically effective format of this book is a series of conversations between ‘The Frustrated Man’—your basic Fundraiser Dude in search of a technique—and ‘The Visionary’, whose uncanny ability to lead the slightly dim Frustrated Man dude in sage directions drags the reader along with him.

Don’t expect Churchillian rhetoric, but do prepare to reconfigure our understanding of non-profit development. If you regularly engage in fundraising for a non-profit organization, you’ll want to have this little book within arm’s reach for easy and repeated scanning as you move forward after a first read.