How to use Incremental Gains approach for massive fundraising results

A while ago I was told a fascinating story about the legendary basketball coach, Pat Riley, widely regarded as one of the most successful coaches of all time.?

Apparently, in one exhausting season Riley’s team had made it all the way to the finals but lost in the last moments of the last game. Everyone felt gutted at losing the championship. Apparently, Riley talked to his mentor that evening about his plan that the team would come out the next season and train as twice as hard as they had this season.?

The mentor advised against it, saying that the exhausted athletes would rebel. It’s hard to be asked to give even more when you feel like you’ve already given your all.

Instead, he advised the coach to use his pre-season meeting to ask the team to become just 1% better in each of the five key skill areas of basketball (shooting, passing, defense etc). He pointed out that being asked to just find a 1% improvement in a specific area stimulates motivation in an entirely different way.??

In practice, most players ended up achieving improvements of much more than 1% in most areas, but more importantly, all those small gains compounded to achieve a far greater team improvement than just 1%.

You’ve probably already heard about the principle of incremental gains…But I’ve also noticed that in practice, most of us struggle to apply it consistently enough to reap the huge rewards it generates.

So in case it helps, I’ve written this blog which shows you practical ways you can apply this approach in your fundraising:

Read the blog here

The most exciting element of the compound effect, is that though the shifts you make are often small, as I say, when taken together the results they generate are often incredibly valuable.?

When celebrating at the end of our Major Gifts and Corporate Partnerships Mastery programmes two weeks ago, I noticed how many people reported that the reason they had made so much progress and improved their results, was not one thing, but the compounding of the many small, (very do-able) improvements they had made to their fundraising through the course!