Happy New Year

SAY WHAT YOU WILL ABOUT 2009
. . . . .BUT BORING IT WAS NOT!

Tasked with running our company in the midst of the greatest recession in seventy years, my brother and I have found the experience has left us with conflicting emotions. Over the past fourteen months, we’ve experienced great disappointment as well as extraordinary stress and pressure. This has been tempered, however, with many instances of our entire team pulling together in a spirit of collective sacrifice to help each other, to assist our clients, and to help the firm endure the hard times. As a company, we have never worked harder, better, more efficiently and dare I say, joyfully then we have over these past months. Hardship and sacrifice have brought out the best in us all.

As I proudly write this letter, I can’t help but think that every one of our client pastors could say the exact same things about their staff, about their volunteers, and about their parishioners. We have witnessed tens of thousands of families digging a bit deeper each weekend to help support their parish in these difficult times; the work of the church has never seemed more important! We have stood in awe as thousands of pledge cards from capital campaigns all across the country arrived in our office; each completed card giving witness to the importance of Church, Faith, Sacrifice and Hope.

We have witnessed the courage of pastors and lay leaders as they boldly made the difficult decisions that were necessary to keep their parishes operating and to maintain the services that their parishioners needed more than ever. We have seen those parishioners respond. Throughout one hundred fifty-seven appeals this fall and approximately three hundred over the course of the year, in dozens of dioceses, in almost thirty states; we have not seen a single instance where the faithful didn’t respond abundantly. It has been humbling.

Looking back, this has been the most difficult year in my professional life; it has also been the most rewarding. I have never felt more proud of the work that our firm does, of our staff, and of the clients we serve. What we do is important because what you do is essential. This year has been humbling and empowering; difficult, yet, wonderful. I look to the future with a renewed spirit of optimism and a deeper belief in the work that we do.

Thank you for permitting Cunneen to assist your parishes, your dioceses and the people who you serve. Your work is important; it is essential! It remains a privilege to serve our Church.

Relevant? He's charging what??

Tough economy, increased competition, hard to differentiate yourself. I get it-its not easy doing business today.

Every business owner, salesperson, self employed professional or consultant has to wake up each morning and ask themselves "Am I as relevant today as I was yesterday?"-"How can I be more relevant tomorrow?"

It is very easy in today's fast moving economy to lose your relevance, to see your approach to business go from being innovative and cutting edge to old fashioned and boring. It isn't difficult to go from market leader to tired old dinosaur. To go from bestseller to bargain rack.

Rarely a day goes by where I am not jarred into a moment of fear as 100 images of the various aspects of my business scroll by each one with a "relevant-yes/no" query box popping up.

Cunneen has certainly made its share of strategic blunders over the past twenty seven years but one thing it has never failed to do is innovate! We fail grandly on occasion but we do innovate, we do change, we do improve-we maintain our relevance! Our firm is MORE relevant today to our Catholic clients than we have been at anytime over the past decade. I promise in the next year or two to become an even more essential tool-even more relevant to our clients, to their needs.

We work very hard at innovation, we work very hard to be relevant-to craft products and services that meet and exceed our clients needs, to be ahead of the "need curve" for our clients. We also believe, strongly, that we should be well compensated for this effort.

Maintaining healthy and robust fees permits the company to pay well, to reward excellent performance to invest in new technology, to maintain excellence among our staff and to provide the quality of services that our clients not only expect but deserve.

Reducing fee's, while potentially making the sales process a bit easier would invariably erode quality. An erosion of quality would lead to a decrease in faith in our business, in the consulting field, in stewardship. A decrease in faith in our business would lead to fewer parishes and non-profits hiring Cunneen or any other firm to assist with their fundraising efforts.

The industry, not just fundraising consulting, but any industry, all industries, suffer when price competition becomes de rigueur. Compete on quality, compete on service, compete on relevance, compete on technology, compete on delivery, but once a market starts down that steep slope of competing on "the low cost" or "lowest fee" its a very quick descent into oblivion.

I am not sure if this post is a plea, a whine, a lecture or merely an observation (likely a combination of all four) but it was certainly on my mind this afternoon.

The Cunneen Company makes many promises-we deliver on most of them. We will never promise to provide the best product at the lowest price. We wont even promise to provide the worst product at the lowest price. Our clients and our profession deserve better.