F-Stop and Be There

09 Jun F-Stop and Be There

9 June 2026

By David Allen, Development for Conservation

Ansel Adams was once asked how he was able to take such extraordinary photographs. “F-stop and be there,” he answered.

A woman invites the Executive Director of a land trust to breakfast. He accepts. She tells him over eggs and coffee that she really appreciates that he talks to both her and her husband. Not just to her husband like all the rest of the fundraisers. That when she calls him, she can get him on the phone. That he seems to care about what she thinks and takes her seriously.

She tells him that she understands more about what is really going on with the organization than she does about other charities. Partly because she cares deeply about conservation, but also because he has been open about the challenges of working in an urban environment. An expensive urban environment.

She tells him that she would like to make an investment in the future of the land trust. She would like to make a gift of $2 million. Unrestricted. She asks him how he might be able to put such an investment to the best use.

A man calls a land trust and asks for the Executive Director. He tells her that he has been impressed with how much land has been protected in such a short period of time. He has been impressed with her specifically and the members of her team he has met. She has an incredible team. A team dedicated to land conservation and driven by a vision much larger than time and available resources are likely to complete. He asks about a project he thought the land trust had been interested in. She shares that it got away. That is now commercially developed because the organization was not able to act quickly enough.

He asks her what the organization might need to look like if it did not lose such projects. If it was in a position to “move quickly enough” most of the time. He tells her that he would like to help her build that organization. He asks her for a business plan. She takes the request seriously and spends the next few months developing a vision for staffing and organizational structure that would be needed to accomplish the goals in her strategic plan. To assume that the goals in her strategic plan were possible to accomplish.

Then she meets with him again. He agrees to provide seed money to accelerate the necessary growth. She would need to put the pieces in place and build the fundraising underneath it so that after five years, the structure would continue on without such a heavy investment from him. His investment over the following five years ended up being more than $5 million.

A man walks in the door of a land trust and asks for the CEO by name. The Executive Director greets him and they sit down in her office. He tells her that the project she is raising money for was a place that he remembers fondly from his childhood. That he grew up in the area and spent many happy hours walking along that part of the lakeshore, swimming in the shallow water, and skipping flat stones on the surface when it was calm. It was a place that made him happy.

He tells her that he could not imagine a future in which young people would not have access to such a place. That he was so glad she was helping protect it. That it was time for him to make a difference. He asks her how much she has left to raise to complete the project. Exactly. She has to look it up, but within a few moments she has it. $533,000. He pulls out his checkbook.

Each one of these stories is real. They really happened. There are dozens of similar stories that have happened as well. That ARE happening every day.

Lucky? Perhaps. But we each have a role to play in creating our own luck.

I can tell you this. They didn’t happen because we rebranded. They didn’t happen because of a Google or Facebook ad. They didn’t happen because AI helped write an appeal letter.

How did they happen?

F-stop and be there.

They happened because someone took the time to be there. To answer the call. To walk the trail. To drop what they were doing and greet the person at the door. To prioritize building relationships with real people – one person at a time.

Fundraising is inefficient. It’s time-consuming. It’s emotionally taxing.

And totally worth it.

Cheers, and have a great week.

-da

PS: Your comments on these posts are welcomed and warmly requested. If you have not posted a comment before, or if you are using a new email address, please know that there may be a delay in seeing your posted comment. That’s my SPAM defense at work. I approve all comments as soon as I am able during the day.

Photo by Globetrotter1948 courtesy of Pixabay.