Building Team Successfully

My Book Review On ~ Building Successful Teams by Bill Butterworth

Bill has an interesting way of starting out his book by comparing Teams to Carnigee Hall. In his introduction he explains how even the audience gets so involved and in anticipation of the performance that they can hardly sit still in their seats. The thousands of people there all knew someone on stage because this was a Senior High National singing event that the schools were chosen for. They had sent in audition tapes and were picked to be there.
So just imagine a bunch of parents sitting and waiting for their sons and daughters to come on stage. The anticipation was phenomenal. So much so, that as they were waiting for the conductor to come out, after the choir had placed themselves on the bleachers, a stage hand from behind the scenes came out and adjusted the stage and the audience gave him a standing ovation. Boy I bet that stage guy sure felt important and why shouldn’t he? He had just as much into the performance as the conductor. Good point don’t you think, but yet we usually never even see the stage personnel. His point being every person involved in getting ready for this performance was equally important because they each did their part. They each did what they were good at and the performance came off beautifully done because of each person’s contribution.
Then lets take that another step, each of the performers were important also their voice with everyone else’s voices made the sound what it was. Each person had an important piece of the puzzle so to say. So it is as a team is forming and working together.

With Fundraising continually on my mind as a way to bring in more money to support my advertising and team building efforts, I decided to do a Fundraising Blitz in our Diocese. Knowing several contacts in the Diocese that work with Youth, was where I started my inquiry.
After receiving about 140 contact names I began to compile my mailing envelopes. I knew I wanted to keep it simple and to the point but still grab their attention. Doing some brainstorming with Art we knew that too many papers were not good. Looking back to the many years of fundraising we did with our Youth Group. Too much information never got read at our home unless is grabbed our attention.
So I put a heading of “Cut Your Fundraising Efforts in Half at the top to the page and compiled a two page handout to a one page. Made an introduction page and sent my fundraising 1,2,3 steps along with a Fundraising Postcard and a scent sample. With my contact on each page.
I do have fundraisers that happen each year because of my first initial efforts I made when I first joined the company. These fundraisers return to me each year with a simple call to the organizer. They have also had better returns each and every year.
Watch our next newsletter to find out how my mailings and follow ups went.

Dawn Rohlik, MN
http://www.GoGetMoreInfo.com