My First review on Goodreads

RelationShift: Revolutionary Fundraising by Michael Bassoff


My rating: 5 of 5 stars
During the 1990s I was Library Director at the Jacob Edwards Library in Southbridge, Massachusetts. The Board of Trustees and I needed to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars locally to match a potential grant to renovate and expand the library building. We recruited a consultant, not to “get the money for us,” but to coach us in how to approach local business leaders and private donors. We all felt, “I don’t know how to ask people for money, and I am not comfortable asking.” We learned that the secret is to view our quest not as begging but as sharing “an opportunity to be part of something big and important and worthy.” The expanded and renovated library was all we could have hoped for. In this book one of my favorite authors, Steve Chandler, and Michael Bassoff, go beyond that simple insight and show how to create a legion of supporters for the worthy mission you wish to promote. Short, to the point, and powerful. (Posted today but read long ago.)

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Harry’s Invocation for Brockton Rotary

I have come to believe that the most powerful four words, the shortest prayer and most challenging statement of faith, the crux of the Lord’s Prayer, for me, is “Thy Will Be Done.”

As Rotarians and Americans we struggle to fathom the difference between abandoning our effort to respond to life with action and dedication, and accepting realities that make life feel hard and merciless. Another short prayer is, for me, the instruction manual for living on Earth: The Serenity Prayer:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change;
the courage to change the things I can; and the wisdom to know the difference.