By Brad Layland, CEO, The FOCUS Group | Author of Turning Donors into Partners Key Takeaways One of the themes God has been impressing on my heart lately is that leadership isn’t primarily about strategy, vision, or even character. Those things certainly matter, but underneath them lies something much deeper. At its core, leadership is a worship issue. That realization

By Brad Layland, CEO, The FOCUS Group | Author of Turning Donors into Partners Key Takeaways One of the most valuable lessons I learned from Bill Hautt, the founder of The FOCUS Group, was surprisingly simple: “The best time to raise money is when you don’t need it.” At first glance, that sounds backward. Most organizations begin fundraising when they

By Brad Layland, CEO, The FOCUS Group | Author of Turning Donors into Partners Key Takeaways Recently, I read an article titled The Parable of the Stored Loaves and Fish: When Donor-Advised Funds Become Spiritual Warehouses by Dr. Scott Rodin, Chief Strategy Officer for The FOCUS Group, and Roland Warren, President and CEO of Care Net. Their article challenged me, encouraged me,

By Brad Layland, CEO, The FOCUS Group | Author of Turning Donors into Partners Key Takeaways Can a donor give away a valuable piece of property, see the community benefit from it, and still lose a $665,000 charitable deduction? According to a recent Wall Street Journal article about a blunder that cost two donors a $665,000 tax-deductible donation, the answer

By Brad Layland, CEO & Senior Consultant | Author of Turning Donors into Partners Key Insights This past weekend, I made a mistake. Not a catastrophic mistake. Not one that made headlines. But one that could have. And like most mistakes, in both flying and fundraising, it didn’t start in the moment. It started long before I ever got in the