I recently read an article I immediately connected with. I love analogies, and this one connected our world of major gift fundraising to the sports world.
The article offers three tips to become a champion, aptly authored by Carly Lloyd, star of the 2015 World Cup Champion U. S. National Women’s Soccer Team. Carly should know. Her three tips:
1. “Practice.”
2. “Every game’s hard.”
3. “It’s all about preparedness.”
This reminded me of an acronym I use to teach good work habits to frontline fundraisers. I encourage them to Go APE – to Anticipate, Prepare, and Execute in their relationship-building work.
I’m not saying my three tips parallel Carly Lloyd’s. What they have in common is that they identify and commit to certain proven skills and attitudes.
I’m also reminded of another habit I regularly see world-class athletes and artists practice – visualization. Watch a sprinter or skier in the starting gate before the bell, or a dancer in the wings, just before her entrance. They see what they’re about to do – before they actually do it. They commit. They believe. They achieve.
Some of my own fundraising mentors encouraged me to visualize success before making the phone call, before knocking on the door, to imagine and commit to what was to come. If world-class performers find value in visualization, what makes us think it’s beneath us?
See it before you do it. ANTICIPATE what’s to come and what might happen, good or bad. PREPARE for what you identify; rehearse it, role play it. Then EXECUTE, based on what you visualized you wanted.
Do it the next time and the time after that. Get good at it; get excellent at it.
(with a tip of the hat to Michael Rosen’s July 24 blog entry
“Soccer Star’s 3 Tips will Make You a Champion Fundraiser”)