Money is evil, get a lot of it. Sex is dirty, save it for someone you love.

Kim Klein's keynote:
The Power of Fundraising in Determining the Future of the Nonprofit Sector. (Part IV of Alliance for Nonprofit Management 2004 Annual Conference stuff)(Kim is publisher of the Grassroots Fundraising Journal)

(So why do we always need these boring, long titles in nonprofit conferences?)

Kim had some great thoughts, great lines, and great observations. Here are a few in random order (for the most part, these are not direct quotes but do get the idea across).

• In our society, we DON'T talk about things that are important. Money is one of those things. That's why people don't like to fundraise.
• Money is evil, get a lot of it. Sex is dirty, save it for someone you love.
• Nonprofits are being asked to do more and more with less and less. Pretty soon, we will be asked to do everything with nothing.
• The estate tax (what the current crop of Republicans call the "death tax") is the oldest tax in our nation. It was put in place by the founders of our nation to keep us from becoming an aristocracy.
• Fundraising is like being stoned to death with popcorn (I really don't know what that means but it sounds great).
• Why is it that foundations are fighting the efforts to restrict their overhead spending but always want nonprofits to limit their overhead (administrative) spending?
• The War on Terror has become a war on civil liberties and dissent.
• Back to not talking about money: The only reason to restrict people from talking about salaries is to keep people from seeing the discrimination involved in pay.
• Che Guevara: "Be realist, do the impossible."

sheldon