Brad Layland, Chief Executive Officer & Senior Consultant
About five years ago, I got one of those phone calls. You know the kind: the ones that stop you in your tracks. The ones that make the rest of the world go quiet.
Our family was in Africa at the time, combining a work trip with a once-in-a-lifetime experience. I had the privilege of visiting a few of our clients doing incredible work in Kenya—and, even more exciting—I was getting ready to run a marathon with my son on a wildlife reserve. In fact, I’d even recorded a podcast about it with my son. (The podcast discusses the challenges of running races in Kenya and fundraising. It can be found here: Running From Lions.)
The day before the race, my phone rang as I was preparing my gear. It was my doctor.
My recent blood work had come back, and the results were alarming. He told me I needed to come in immediately. I told him I was in Africa. Not only was I halfway across the world, but I was about to run 26.2 miles through lion country.
When I explained where I was, my doctor paused and said, “Honestly, it’s probably an inaccurate reading. If your white blood cell count were truly that low, you wouldn’t be standing up, let alone running a marathon.”
So, I ran the race. I finished strong. And then I returned home. But when I got back to the U.S., we re-ran the tests—and again, my white blood cell counts were dangerously low.
Thus began six months of visits to specialists. Test after test, appointment after appointment. Finally, a leading specialist shrugged and said, “Brad, you’re fine. God just made you different. Those numbers don’t tell the whole story.”
My wife smiled at the doctor and said, “I could have told you that—Brad’s always been a little different.”
But even after that reassurance, something in me wasn’t ready to settle. I couldn’t just accept, “You’re fine,” when the numbers told another story.
So I kept pushing. I found a functional medicine doctor who took a deeper look. He prescribed supplements and lifestyle adjustments. I stuck with it. And I kept asking questions.
Last week, nearly five years later, I sat across from my primary doctor—the one who’s walked with me through three decades of medical checkups—and he looked at me, stunned.
“Brad, what did you do?” he asked.
My bloodwork was completely normal. The numbers that once caused alarms now told a story of health. I didn’t do anything magical. I just didn’t accept the first answer. I made a plan and I stuck to it.
Isn’t that exactly what great fundraising requires?
In our work, we often see organizations accept the “first answer.” We get busy chasing the urgent—pulling off the next event, scrambling for year-end gifts—and we forget to stop, plan, and ask: What would it look like to truly maximize our results and minimize our costs?
Proper planning is one of the six key principles we teach in Taking Donors Seriously®. It’s the idea that real success comes not from frantic effort but strategic, sustained attention to the right things.
What this means:
- Building an annual fundraising plan that maps out engagement for all donor levels.
- Prioritizing major donor relationships, not just event sponsorships.
- Spending more time focusing on the most strategic activities and less time reacting to every urgent request.
Just last week, I met with a new client. They had built their entire major donor strategy around getting donors to sponsor events—not investing in genuine, transformational relationships.
It was easy. It was efficient. But it wasn’t the best thing they could do. And it is not likely to be sustainable.
Just like me with my bloodwork, if we’re willing to pause and ask more questions—if we’re willing to push past “good enough” and develop a real plan—we’ll see deeper engagement, healthier organizations, and more thriving missions.
Jesus, in His parables about the treasure in the field and the pearl of great price, reminds us that the Kingdom is worth pursuing strategically and wholeheartedly (Matthew 13:44–46).
Shouldn’t our work with donors reflect that same intentional pursuit? Proper planning isn’t glamorous. It doesn’t always grab attention. But it’s the right work that ensures we’re running the right race—and crossing the right finish line.
We’ve been privileged to help many organizations be more effective in their fundraising by learning and implementing relational fundraising principles in their work with donors. Want to talk?