In this episode of Funding the Future Now, Dr. Randy Dirks talks with Christine Mangino, president of Queensborough Community College (CUNY), about earning donor trust through radical transparency. Rather than hiding hard numbers, she shows her foundation board the full budget down to the penny — because when leaders share only good news, people stop believing them. She builds trust by letting donors see the work firsthand, whether at a campus celebration or graduation, where one donor told her, "I know I am giving my money to the right place." The same authenticity drives her internal culture and her crisis leadership, which she sums up as optimism paired with a plan. Her message is simple: people trust what they can see, so show them everything — the good, the bad, and the ugly.

In this episode of Funding the Future Now, Randy Dirks talks with Bob Dees, president of the National Center for Healthy Veterans, about how to fund and lead work that takes years to show results. Bob argues that sophisticated donors don't actually expect quick wins, and that the leader's job is to measure outcomes while also painting the complexity of the challenge, illustrated by a veteran who would have been counted a loss at three months and a clear win years later. Drawing on thirty-one years in the Army, Bob names the sector's most common failure as vision without operational strategy: nonprofits cast the vision but skip the phasing, role definition, and lines of authority needed to actually get there. He closes on language, arguing that organizations should look through the windshield rather than the rearview mirror, using a prophetic name, tagline, and vocabulary that names where people are headed instead of what happened to them.

Dr. John Fuchko closed a nearly 10% budget gap at Dalton State College by opening the books to his campus instead of handing down cuts from the corner office. He also posted the highest giving year in school history, more than $7 million, without a campaign to rally anyone around. His explanation traces back to a line from a mentor named Bill Goodwin: the power is in the question. We also get into what five command tours taught him about planning, what he had to unlearn when he left the military, and the three filters he uses to decide what earns his time. If your senior leaders are still asking you for permission, John has a blunt diagnosis for you.

Marcus Meneese has been running a nonprofit for fourteen years, and when asked what quietly destroys donor trust, he did not hesitate for a second. Marcus Meneese Sr. founded Stronger Than My Father fourteen years ago in Nashville to serve young men growing up without fathers. Leadership skills. Career exposure. Drone flying, cooking, auto mechanics, podcasting. Real things boys can see and touch, because touching a career can trigger a mind toward a future it had not imagined yet.

I sat down with Marcus on the Funding the Future Now podcast. Three things he said are worth every executive director's attention.

In this episode of Funding the Future Now, Dr. Randy Dirks talks with head of school Wesley Laws about building healthy teams through relational equity — the mutual trust leaders earn by being present, knowing their people, and owning their mistakes rather than posturing as the hero who has it all figured out ("your team is not looking for you to be a hero, they are looking for you to be a helper"). The heart of the conversation is conflict: most leaders treat it like a fire to stamp out and avoid it until it spreads, when the real skill is pinching out the match early — speaking up at the first murmur or slight before it hits the gasoline and becomes a wildfire that takes out the whole "neighborhood" of concentric relationships. Laws's signature move is the Monday-morning reset: do the reflective legwork first, then walk in and own what's gone wrong before you're shown it, because a leader who names their own shortcomings rebuilds trust faster than one who waits to be confronted. When teams finally get healthy, he says, everyone — administration, teacher, and family — gets in the room, names the real issues, and pushes toward a shared goal, turning struggling students into thriving ones; gossip is the enemy that quietly undoes that work. The takeaway Randy lands on: get people in different places, with different opinions, onto the same page by bringing issues into the open, understanding them, and owning them.

In the nonprofit world, we so often cast ourselves as the hero — look how many homes we built, how many meals we served, how many wells we dug. But your real job is to be a confident philanthropic advisor. The donor is the hero. You're the guide. And to guide well, you have to understand the other person — their values, what matters to them, what they're longing to achieve — not who your organization is. So be that advisor. Build a bridge between the donor's values, goals, and dreams and what your organization can actually deliver.

So the whole issue is building collateral over a long period of time. And that's what leads to trust. And trust is indispensable in the success of a nonprofit because as donors trust you, they say, I'm trusting you with my most valuable resources, the money, the assets that I have earned. And I want to give it to you and to your organization because I trust you.

To be an effective development professional, all you need are three skills. And it is not about being a good talker or promoter. Mark and Shiela's first gift of $10,000 has now grown to annual gifts totaling $400,000! It occurred due to using these three skills. They are: deep listening, being a philanthropic advisor and engaging in the long game.