On Sunday, March 23rd, the Gospel for the Third Sunday of Lent is from the Gospel of Luke (13:1-9) where Jesus tells us that tragedies will happen.\u00a0 The second part of the reading contains the parable of the fig tree.\u00a0 It’s the one where the landowner talks to his groundskeeper and says that for three years, he has found no fruit on a fig tree, and orders the groundskeeper to cut it down.\u00a0 The groundskeeper, however, proposes that he cares for the tree, cultivates the land, manures around it, and then, if it still doesn’t bear fruit, then he will cut it down.<\/p>\n
While the parable shares the relationship between God, Jesus and the chosen people, it can also relate to your school.<\/p>\n
If you are a development director, or have a development director at your school, the usual “lifespan” (that is, the time from when they start to the time they start to experience significant burnout and\/or leave) is 18 months.\u00a0 School leaders and board members see that development isn’t generating revenues in the short-term, and may decide to try a new development director to get the income they need.<\/p>\n
Which is precisely the wrong thing to do.<\/p>\n
Why?\u00a0 Because development is not about raising funds in the short-term.\u00a0 That’s what fundraising does, and is unsustainable.\u00a0 Development focuses on the long-term, and deals with developing relationships.\u00a0 Development professionals need to involve and engage members of the school community’s external constituencies, and, from that engagement, significant and sustainable revenues will develop.<\/p>\n
But. it. takes. time.<\/p>\n
How long?\u00a0 Three to five YEARS.\u00a0 And that’s why the Parable of the Fig Tree is SO appropriate for Advancement professionals today.\u00a0 Three years is the MINIMUM time frame where significant fruit can happen.<\/p>\n
It’s just like marketing.\u00a0 Some leaders think that the measurement of effective marketing is an increase in enrollment…which is also incorrect thinking.\u00a0 The measurement of effective marketing is an increase in the number of inquiries to the school.\u00a0 First, however, the research needs to be done to determine that there is a “market” of potential students for the continued growth of the school.<\/p>\n
When a development director experiences burnout (which will happen at least a few times within three to five years), the tendency is to either quit or acquiesce to the leadership’s call for a change in personnel.\u00a0 In reality, doing so can be compared to changing horses midstream since, in most instances, the “results” which will be brought forth by the newly hired development director could be the same, or, even worse, over the same amount of time that the previous development director served the school.\u00a0 The reason is a simple one.\u00a0 The development director develops relationships, and when they leave (for whatever reason), the relationship has a good chance of going with them, and the new development director is left to start from scratch – which may mean moving in a completely new direction than the previous development director had set, and developing relationships from the starting point.<\/p>\n
The Parable of the Fig Tree acknowledges that after three years, there may not be the “fruit” of revenue.\u00a0 The story says that the tree will be kept if it bears fruit – but note that the parable doesn’t say “an abundance of fruit.”\u00a0 Development should start<\/em> to see results in terms of revenue in 3 to 5 years, but the real fruit is the relationships which are developed with alumni, business leaders, community members those individuals connected to these three main groups.\u00a0 The sweetness and abundance of that fruit will come, but it must be nurtured, and the ground around it cultivated.\u00a0 It cannot become a dumping ground for other material (which landscapers call “fill”) that will not contribute to sustainable growth.<\/p>\n \u00a9 Michael V. Ziemski, SchoolAdvancement, 2010-2025\u00a0 (Original publication date: 20100308)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On Sunday, March 23rd, the Gospel for the Third Sunday of Lent is from the Gospel of Luke (13:1-9) where […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8119,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2253","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-marketing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/archangeladvancement.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/MM-Purple.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2ggCS-Al","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archangeladvancement.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2253","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archangeladvancement.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archangeladvancement.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archangeladvancement.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archangeladvancement.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2253"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/archangeladvancement.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2253\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7698,"href":"https:\/\/archangeladvancement.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2253\/revisions\/7698"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archangeladvancement.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archangeladvancement.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archangeladvancement.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archangeladvancement.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}