Six Months of The Rise of Sustainable Giving

This week marks exactly six months since the release of The Rise of Sustainable Giving. 🎉

Over the past six months, we celebrated:

🎉 21 years of working with charities.

🎉 10 years of talking about and researching the subscription economy.

🎉 3 years of writing, researching, interviewing, editing, and publishing the book.

🎉 35 clients served at Imago Consulting.

🎉 34 people directly involved in bringing the book to life.

🎉 19 endorsements from many of the sector’s most prominent experts and leaders.

🎉 46 keynotes, panels, interviews, webinars, podcasts (and counting).

🎉 10,000+ leaders of charities reached with the message of Sustainable Giving.

🎉 Released a #1 Amazon Best Seller! 🎉🎉🎉

Above: Premiering my book at the ACF conference in Myrtle Beach in February… that feels like a lifetime ago. It’s been a whirlwind over the past six months, and the response has humbled me.

Whew. 😅

Truth be told, it’s a lot. All good stuff, but it’s been a lot.

I’ve spent a lot of time over the past six weeks thinking about what sustainability looks like in my own life and leadership. 

You see, I’m not just interested in growth – unmitigated growth at all costs in the field of biology has another name – cancer. To be clear, I don’t mean to make light of a truly devastating disease, but to point out its parallel, if we only pursue growth for growth’s sake. 

I’m more interested in health and thriving, and I started Imago Consulting in part out of a desire to create thriving leaders, thriving organizations, and yes, a thriving personal and professional life.

Today, I’m feeling like we’re in a good place. And there is more to come. As of today, we’ve announced several key initiatives to promote a culture of Sustainable Giving:

🚀 Launched SustainableGiving.org

🚀 Launched the Sustainable Giving Podcast

🚀 Launched the Sustainable Giving Workshop (Sept 10-12 - you should come!)

There are more announcements to come, but all in due time. 

For now, we celebrate! 🎉🍾

If you picked up the book, would you do me a favor?

I timed it, and it takes just 19 seconds… Would you add a rating on the book’s Amazon page? 

My publisher tells me that getting to 50 reviews is critical for the book to get the best reach, and yet, it's one of the most difficult things to get people to do. You can help me get one review closer to that goal! 

We put together a quick video of some highlights over the past six months:

Above: Video of highlights over the past six-plus months, sharing with leaders across the sector and celebrating The Rise of Sustainable Giving.

💡 Takeaway: Sustainable recurring giving is a movement, and I’m just glad to be one of the flag bearers for the opportunity for charities and their leaders to build growing recurring revenue streams to accomplish more of their missions, more effectively. 

What I Hope For

We are just getting started with spreading the word for sustainable giving, recurring giving, inspiring generosity, and sustainable innovation. 

People have asked me why I wrote the book. Bottom line, books are a lot of work, so there are several reasons I wrote the book, including:

🚀 To shine a light on a trend. I was seeing something that I wanted others to be able to understand and tap into.

🚀 To move the sector forward. Not just the charities, but also the providers that work with them.

🚀 To combat the generosity crisis. I want to do my part to help grow generosity in a time when fewer individuals are giving to charity.

🚀 To establish credibility. At Imago Consulting, we serve clients to help them grow recurring giving – a book helps establish authority and for good reason – books are hard to do!

🚀 To develop and sharpen my thinking. There is a famous quote from Joan Didion – “I don't know what I think until I write it down.” Books are a great way to process and develop thinking.

🚀 To learn. Writing a book is a forcing function for learning. I’ve found that writing pushes me to constantly keep learning and growing.

🚀 To grow Imago Consulting. In addition to visibility and opportunities, I wanted the book to help improve our processes and approach, create visibility, introduce people to the topic, and help leaders see our way of thinking around growing recurring giving. 

🚀 To open doors. A book is simply the opening of a new doorway – a doorway to many possibilities. Some of these I can see from where I stand, but still many others I know I cannot. As I step through this doorway, I’m excited about the future.

Looking forward, I need to continue to develop the personal rhythms and habits to metabolize this growth. To 10X rather than 2X. But I’m not okay with dishealth. So I need to figure that out. 

There are 1.1 million nonprofits in the US who need to hear this message, and around 250,000 leaders (of the 12.3 million in the nonprofit sector) who need to be equipped to take advantage of this opportunity. 

I want to build a thriving organization, but I don’t expect that Imago Consulting can reach all 1.1M+250K alone. It’s going to take a sector-wide effort, bringing together the charities, technology providers, agencies, associations, and consultancies to truly move philanthropy forward. 

That’s why the podcast, the speaking, the workshop, and our core assessment and advisory work are so important. 

💡 Takeaway: Anything worth doing should serve multiple goals. Sustainable giving is worth doing, and we’re helping charities tap into this opportunity through our workshops, assessments, and advisory work, even as we partner across the sector. 
If you are interested in working with us to grow sustainable giving, you can read more about our assessment and advisory work and apply here.

Until next week… Surf’s Up! 🌊

  - Dave

About the Author | Dave Raley

Consultant, speaker, and author Dave Raley is the founder of Imago Consulting, a firm that helps nonprofits and businesses who serve nonprofits create profitable growth through sustainable innovation. He’s the author of the book The Rise of Sustainable Giving: How the Subscription Economy is Transforming Recurring Giving, and What Nonprofits Can Do to Benefit. Dave also writes a weekly innovation and leadership column called The Wave Report, and the co-founder of the Purpose & Profit Podcast — a show about the ideas at the intersection of nonprofit causes and for-profit brands. Connect with Dave on LinkedIn.

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