Everything in Moderation

     We've all heard this wise adage.  It's usually used to encourage us to curtail excessive behavior - limit the consumption of alcoholic beverages, avoid overeating, live a well-balanced life, etc.  The emphasis is always on "moderation."  After all, as another wise adage says, "You can't do everything."  Or, as Clint Eastwood's "Dirty Harry" once said, "A man's got to know his limitations."

     If you're thinking like that, you're thinking like "man."  Indeed, humanity is limited because of our humanity - but "With God, all things are possible."  And "All things" is usually synonymous with "everything."

     This is especially true when dealing with an institutional advancement mindset - EVERYTHING has to happen because it is a system that works together.  Each element of the DREAM acronym (Development, Retention, Enrollment, Asset Management and Marketing) drives the other.

     To see how this is lived out in the real world, take a look at today's focus on the rising cost of gasoline.  Rising oil prices increase the cost of gasoline.  It also affects the cost of food since products must be transported to the marketplace.  As alternative sources of energy are explored, ethanol (fuel made from corn) is suggested, and, since it's made from a food product, will make food costs rise more.  We can look at wind power and solar power, which make environmentalists cringe since the environments in which these structures are made detract from nature and can cause damage to wildlife, and if we seek oil from non-food products (like sawgrass or palm), it might endanger the wildlife which use these resources as their food.  Technologists are looking at redesigning engines to get better gas mileage, operate with fuel cells, or use the benefits of both gasoline and electricity in a hybrid model.

     "Hybrid" is a good place to start, since it's a "both" strategy - sort of like moving from fundraising to institutional advancement.  A school can't just "drop" its fundraising program and begin to solicit donors and expect to survive - it's a process that has to be managed...one where institutional advancement efforts are begun, and as they increase, then dependence on fundraising can decrease.  But institutional advancement isn't linear.  You can't say, "We'll start with marketing, and then we'll focus on good asset management, and then we'll see how we can retain the students that come to our school."  It ALL has to be done at once!  To continue the analogy to the oil crisis, the answer is EVERYTHING - wind, solar, alternative fuel, nuclear, more efficiency, recycling, etc.  Everything must begin to be enacted so that each piece can start to chip away at the big problem.

     Will everything be perfect from the start?  Hardly.  Will there be adjustments?  Absolutely.  It's like maintaining landscape - mowing, weeding, trimming, feeding, watering, pruning, planting, edging - if all of this isn't done, the landscape suffers.  But to keep it manageable, it must be done with a little attention to each - "in moderation."

     Remember, if you want different results, you need to change your point of view.  Shifting from "moderation" to "everything" also helps to build an abundance mentality - helping us to thrive, rather than just survive.  Jesus told us that He came so that we "may have life, and have it more abundantly" (John 10:10).

© Michael V. Ziemski, SchoolAdvancement, 2008 (Original Publication Date: 20080721)

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