Sioux Indian Saying

I was rummaging through one of my old files. I found this piece I had been saving for years. I’m not certain how I planned on using it. When I wrote this a dozen or so years ago, I thought I would use it somehow for a magazine article or whatever. I filed it away for further thinking and gestation. It has not improved with age. Now I’ll pass it on to you.

If you have been trying the same fundraising practices over and over and over again without success, we have something for you to think about. There’s an
old Sioux Indian saying that goes: “When you discover you are riding a dead horse . . . the best strategy is to dismount.”

However, in some organizations, if the fundraising isn’t going as well as planned, they often try the following fundraising strategies:

1.  Buy a stronger whip.
2.  Change riders.
3.  Have a staff meeting to discuss.
4.  Create a training session to increase their riding ability.
5.  Change the policy and declare that “this horse is not dead.”
6.  Provide additional funding to increase the horse’s performance.
7.  Form an ad hoc committee to find uses for dead horses.
8.  Promote the dead horse to a vice president’s position.

Please don’t send me any nasty notes about why I can’t be more serious.