After tanking last spring, college fundraisers’ confidence in meeting their annual benchmarks has been on the upswing since June, according to a series of surveys of development officials by the fundraising consultancy Washburn & McGoldrick. Sixty-five percent of fundraisers now say they’re confident they will meet their goals for fiscal year 2021, according to a January survey of 506 fundraisers at 84 institutions — mostly colleges and universities but also 11 independent schools and one art museum.
In April, the first of this series of surveys found that 22 percent of higher-education fundraisers expected to meet their fiscal-year 2020 benchmarks. Fundraising leaders and gift officers shared equally bleak fundraising outlooks that month: About 24 percent of chief advancement officers, vice presidents, and associate vice presidents said they anticipated meeting their fundraising goals. Twenty-one percent of gift officers and alumni fundraisers said the same.
Fundraisers were right to worry. Higher education’s broadest fundraising survey, the Council for Advancement and Support of Education’s annual “Voluntary Support of Education” report, recorded stagnant giving during the 2019-20 fiscal academic year fiscal year — bearing out the low confidence levels fundraisers expressed in April. It was the first time in a decade that CASE reported flat giving to colleges.
The first months of the new fiscal year, however, seemed to buoy fundraisers’ hopes. After dipping to just 17 percent in June, the share of fundraisers expressing confidence jumped to 40 percent in the September survey.
Confidence Converges
That fiscal-year reset, however, didn’t immediately reflect a boost in confidence across the board. Previous surveys in June and September found notable gaps in confidence between higher-education fundraising leaders and gift officers. In June, a quarter of chief advancement officers, vice presidents, and associate vice presidents said they were confident that their institution would meet its fundraising fiscal year 2021 targets. Among gift officers and alumni fundraisers, however, that share was just 13 percent. In September, 59 percent of fundraising leaders expressed fundraising confidence, while just 39 percent of gift officers said the same.
In January, advancement leaders and gift officers expressed similar fundraising outlooks for the first time since April — and this time, confidence won out. Sixty-six percent of chief advancement officers, vice presidents, and associate vice presidents said they expected their institution to meet its fundraising goals for fiscal year 2021. Among gift and alumni officers, that share was 62 percent.
The survey also noted the return of capital projects to institutions’ priorities. In June and October, fundraisers largely said they were not highlighting capital campaigns or construction projects in their appeals to donors. That changed in January. That shift is in line with the advice of some consultants, who have encouraged fundraisers to continue with campaign plans because of the overall strength of the stock market.
Survey questions about virtual work and productivity challenges underscored the burnout many fundraisers have been feeling. More than 40 percent of fundraisers said they take care of themselves through exercise such as walks, runs, and yoga. Another 20 percent said they weren’t able to make enough time for self-care, and 17 percent said they preferred quiet time.
“It is becoming more and more evident how weary we are all feeling,” said one fundraiser. “And yet the work must go on.”
Respondents said their top challenges were social and political unrest, exhaustion from video calls, and managing work and home responsibilities. One fundraiser said her supervisor and employer understood the challenges of remote work, but she felt she was failing to balance managing her two young children’s virtual schooling with her career.
“I expect to have a ‘mediocre’ year,” she said. “Will that prevent mothers, like myself, from having job promotions in the future?”
So-called Zoom fatigue was a particular challenge for fundraising leaders, who said they spend an average of more than 6.5 hours a day on video calls with donors, colleagues, and university leaders, among others. That compares with the more than 4.5 hours of video calls that gift officers and alumni officers have on average each day. Fundraising leaders spend nearly twice as many hours on video calls with colleagues and staff as gift officers do.
Despite the drain of video calls, 40 percent of respondents said they hoped to continue working primarily remotely after the end of the pandemic. A mix of in-office and remote work was a close second, with 38 percent of respondents saying they’d prefer that. Just 22 percent of respondents said they’d like to return to working primarily in the office when the pandemic ends.
Respondents’ affinity for remote work largely depended on their role in the organization. Forty-five percent of gift officers and alumni officers said they hoped to continue remote work all or most of the time after the pandemic, while just 17 percent of chief advancement officers, vice presidents, and associate vice presidents said the same. Those percentages were reversed among people who favored a full return to the office. Just 17 percent of gift officers want to be in the office all or most of the time after the pandemic, compared with 45 percent of fundraising leaders.
Among the other findings:
- Nearly 70 percent of respondents said it’s a challenge to schedule meetings with donors during the pandemic. That’s a marked increase from the 33 percent of respondents who said they anticipated this challenge in the first survey in this series.
- Two-thirds of respondents said they worried about connecting with new donors nearly every day.
- Distraction is a challenge for fundraisers at all levels. Forty-one percent of gift officers and alumni officers named it as a frequent challenge, as did 40 percent of chief advancement officers, vice presidents, and associate vice presidents.
