Sylvia Zaldivar-Sykes has quadrupled revenue since taking over as leader of her organization in 2008. Like a lot of nonprofit officials who are good at raising money, she credits her ability to establishing rapport with donors.
And not just the donors who look like her.
“I’m a Latina,” says Ms. Zaldivar-Sykes, executive director of the Lake County Community Foundation, near Chicago. “And I’m successful in raising money from the African-American community. It’s more than my Latina-ness—it’s my knowledge of the community.”
As America continues to diversify, more charities are seeking to raise money from minority donors but are grappling with how to go about it.
Some charities have moved to hire fundraisers who share the racial or ethnic background of sought-after new supporters. Yet the organizations say that finding minority candidates for those jobs can be challenging. A sign of the paucity of minority fundraisers: Ninety percent of the members of the Association of Fundraising Professionals are white.
Mixed Concern
Diversifying the fundraiser ranks is such a hot topic that the association plans to hold a conference in Pittsburgh in October to explore the issue; about 25 nonprofits in North America will meet and share their ideas for attracting more blacks, Hispanics, and other non-whites into fundraising.
Not all fundraisers think it matters whether donors are solicited by members of their own racial or ethnic groups. The important thing, they say, is the ability to make a connection based on shared concerns. New research examining college donors seems to bolster that theory; the results indicate that only immigrants and first-generation donors prefer to be solicited for a gift by someone from their own background.
Ms. Zaldivar-Sykes attributes her success in raising money to her understanding of the issues that people face in the Chicago suburbs where her charity works. She knows, for instance, that black donors care deeply about the plight of men and boys who have entered the criminal-justice system, and she brings such knowledge into meetings with potential supporters.
“How you become a good fundraiser, it doesn’t necessarily matter what the color of your skin is or what your background is,” Ms. Zaldivar-Sykes says. What matters is “when you go out and meet the donor, do you inspire their confidence because you know what’s going on in the community and what the community needs?”
Slow Progress
Some charities that seek to diversify their fundraising staffs are recruiting minority candidates from other fields that require similar skills, like sales. Others are building from the ground up. For instance, one historically black institution, Paul Quinn College, has created a fundraising curriculum for students in its business program.
Colleges see a particularly urgent need to diversify their fundraising staffs: More minorities than ever are sitting in classrooms—students who one day, it is hoped, will become generous alumni.
But progress is slow, says one researcher.
“I don’t think that most colleges or universities and organizations are very far along at all in terms of diversifying their fundraising staff,” says Marybeth Gasman, a professor of higher education at the University of Pennsylvania.
Ms. Gasman and Nelson Bowman III, executive director of development at Prairie View A&M University, conducted a study last year of college fundraising departments. In their new book, Engaging Diverse College Alumni: The Essential Guide to Fundraising, the researchers concluded that college fundraisers “are ill-equipped in their ability to cultivate these growing populations. They have long engaged and solicited mainly white alumni and know almost nothing about philanthropy and fundraising within diverse cultures.”
Of the 61 institutions they surveyed, 17 percent of fundraisers were members of minority groups. But very few blacks, Hispanics, and others were working directly with donors, the researchers noted.
Ms. Gasman says the research she did on donors and fundraisers found that “people tend to respond better to someone who looks like them,” and that is particularly true of minority donors who are of the first generation in their families to give or to live in America.
But, she adds, the research indicates that “once people are assimilated, across all racial and ethnic groups, they’re OK with white people asking them to give,” as long as the approach is culturally sensitive.
Crafting New Strategies
Cornell University—with more than 47 percent of its current undergraduates either minority or international students—is trying to help fundraisers do a better job of reaching diverse donors. Yve-Car Momperousse, who left her post as the university’s director of diversity relations and programming this summer to pursue a graduate program, directed training to teach Cornell’s fundraisers to be more culturally sensitive. Her department, along with a diversity council, also worked to recruit minority fundraisers and craft job descriptions to emphasize Cornell’s commitment to diversity.
The descriptions tell candidates that they need to be “embracing and welcoming and prepared,” as she puts it, to deal with all of Cornell’s graduates, especially its alumni groups that represent minorities.
So far, the university is seeing results in cultivating minority supporters. When the Black Alumni Association sought to raise money for a scholarship honoring two longtime professors, Ms. Momperousse’s colleagues helped the group compile lists of donors, organize a fundraising event, strategize about reaching out to new supporters, and raise money. Ultimately, $220,000 was raised for the scholarship.
Says Ms. Momperousse: “That had never been done before.”
Growing Their Own
Paul Quinn College, in Dallas, is dealing with the shortage of minority fundraisers by developing an undergraduate degree curriculum in nonprofit fundraising and philanthropy.
The original goal was to secure fundraising talent for colleges like Paul Quinn, says Halima Leak, who recently left her job leading the college’s Center for Fundraising and Philanthropy to take the top fundraising position at the Texas Muslim Women’s Foundation. However, she adds, the impact is likely to be bigger: “We will provide a diverse pipeline of talent across the board in the nonprofit sector.”
The center is working with the local chapter of the Association of Fundraising Professionals to get students involved in internships with local charities and pair them with fundraising mentors. The program, begun last fall, is starting small, with about five students.
Widening the Pool
At the Phillips Collection, an art museum in Washington, Dale Mott isn’t content to wait for the pipeline to fill up with more minority job candidates.
Mr. Mott, who is African-American, leads a staff of 11 fundraisers, four of whom are minorities. He plans to hire two more colleagues and is casting the net widely.
He searches for candidates who either work in fundraising or are running programs at organizations that serve minorities. Such job seekers might not be plugged into a mainstream industry group, such as the Association of Fundraising Professionals, he says, but they may already possess skills and qualities that can help them, with a bit of training, become good development officers.
To expand his network of sources as he searches for minority candidates who can help the Phillips raise more money, he attends events sponsored by other organizations, such as those that serve Latinos.
“We have to continue to roll up our sleeves and be more aggressively engaged in communities of color for talent,” Mr. Mott says. “We can’t always rely on the sort of traditional places and spaces from which to pull that talent. This is not a spectator sport. ”
No Guarantees
Still, not every fundraiser thinks adding more minorities to a charity’s staff will necessarily lead to more giving from blacks, Hispanics, and others.
Akira Barclay, an African-American and a nonprofit consultant who has served as director of development at three charities, says what really matters is not the color of a fundraiser’s skin but that he or she is “very talented in connecting with communities of color.”
Some of the people she has worked for, however, have given her assignments that suggested they thought her racial background would produce big gifts from blacks.
“I have never had anyone deliberately say I’ve been hired to help bring other African-American donors and to connect with them,” Ms. Barclay says. But once on the job, she adds, her new bosses have often told her that the first person she needed to meet with was a potential donor who was African-American or a black board member who needed to be nudged to give more.
She says she wishes that leaders would be more upfront about their motivations in the interview process. Not talking about race at that time, she notes, can cause distrust later. But she thinks it will be hard for many charity leaders to change.
“Conversations about race tend to be difficult for most people,” she says, “and then you’re talking about money as well.”
Tweaking Pitches
Even minority fundraisers who are steeped in the culture of the donors they’re trying to attract often find themselves learning a thing or two.
Nathania Lo, manager of Asian giving at the Canadian Cancer Society’s division in British Columbia, focuses on attracting support primarily among immigrants from Hong Kong who have settled in Vancouver. She gets pointers, though, from the charity’s volunteer Asian Giving Committee on how to approach such donors in a manner that’s culturally sensitive.
For example: Heeding the committee’s advice, the charity tweaked its annual gala, which raises up to $150,000 from Chinese donors. The committee’s members told the group that the donors would be hesitant to raise their hands when asked to pledge specific dollar amounts.
Even Ms. Lo, a Chinese woman who speaks the language, says she did not realize the strong tug of modesty among Asians until it was flagged by the committee.
“In the Chinese community, they don’t like to do that,” she says. “So, we’ve adapted.”
Instead, she says, the charity asked Chinese donors to fill out a form and “donate quietly, as opposed to being publicly recognized” during the gala.
“I think it showed that we respected and tried to learn how to effectively engage them,” she says.
This kind of focus has garnered the group some $750,000 each year in total contributions from Asian donors. The charity is now seeking to build stronger relationships and get more contributions from supporters with roots in other parts of Asia.
Says Ms. Lo: “Like any other marketing and fundraising strategy, it’s about knowing your audience and how to communicate with them effectively.”
Learn more about how to appeal to minority donors in our supplement, Tomorrow’s Donors.
