Dear Bioneer!
That’s right – the dread season of the endless “ask” is upon us. Over the last few years, a tsunami of year-end nonprofit funding pitches clogs our inboxes to the point that you just want to hit “delete” without even looking – as worthy as they may be.
We don’t want to be part of that noise. We don’t want you to delete us! At the same time, your year-end gifts are crucial to Bioneers. What to do?
We figure we’ll just tell it like it is and call the upcoming series of Bulletins “Sucking up to Money!” But we’re going to share truly exciting substantive updates about the electrifying work Bioneers is actually doing – no heart-tugging arias, fear-inducing “or else’s,” or “mirror, mirror on the wall” riffs telling you you’re the fairest of them all.
If you’re inspired to
make a gift because of the power of the work, fantastic! If not, delete away.
Bioneers is flowering in powerful, beautiful and new ways, and we’re gearing up to grow again. One of the beauties of investing in Bioneers is that you’re leveraging an entire community of visionary leadership, a movement of movements and a network of networks. Thousands of groups and individual leaders benefit directly and indirectly.
We profoundly thank all of you who have supported us over these many years. We’re in it for the long game – and you are too. Many of you have supported us consistently for decades.
Yet at the same time, there’s no doubt the next five years will be the decisive window to turn epic change into system change. Urgency has become emergency. So let’s not kid ourselves. The time is now.
And make no mistake. The Great Recession has brutalized the nonprofit sector into the Hunger Games. Tens of thousands of great groups have gone out of business at exactly the moment the work is more needed than ever. Just about everyone is struggling. The average tenure of a nonprofit executive director is 18 months. Why? It has become like the permanent political campaigns of our politicians who now spend most of their time sucking up to money!
“Bioneers is the hope replenishment pit stop on our journey to a better world.”
Check out what Annie Leonard, Executive Director of Greenpeace USA and creator of
The Story of Stuff, said at Bioneers 2015 about why Bioneers is so vitally important to her and to our movement of movements. Then inquire within about responding to Annie's call to put your financial mojo to work with Bioneers.
We hope you get a large charge from our upcoming “Sucking Up To Money!” Bulletins. And hopefully a good laugh too. After all, we all do what we do because we’re in love – with life, with nature, with people, and with this amazing community of which we are so fortunate to be a part.
With Love, Gratitude and Respect --
Kenny Ausubel
