Desperately Seeking Fundraisers

Hiring fundraisers is never easy, but for many nonprofits the situation is becoming dire.

Organizations are posting ads — sometimes for six-figure director of development positions — and getting few if any qualified applicants. They’re leaving money on the table because they don’t have the people they need to ask for all the gifts they could bring in. And the fundraisers who remain are overworked and overwhelmed. Some are leaving the profession altogether.

To find out how the hiring crisis is changing the fundraising work force, the Chronicle commissioned a national survey of fundraisers to ask them about their job satisfaction and how staff vacancies affect their work.

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Nine in 10 fundraisers said that unfilled fundraising positions significantly increased their workloads. Similarly, 89 percent agreed that their nonprofit didn’t employ enough people to raise as much as they had the potential to attract. In interviews and survey responses, development professionals told the Chronicle about working 12-hour days, burning out, and chasing unrealistic fundraising goals.
“Every fundraiser I know is stressed, understaffed, and cannot fill open positions, struggling with unrealistic fundraising goals,” a survey participant from Wisconsin wrote. “It is unfortunate because many great fundraisers I know are leaving the profession.”

Fundraising leaders know they have a problem and are starting to change course.
Many have turned to nontraditional candidates with experience in sales or marketing to fill vacant positions. They’re also taking a hard look at how to help new hires get off to a strong start and, in many cases, professionalizing the training process. Recruiters and human-resources experts say there’s even more organizations could do. They recommend revising goals for short-staffed development teams and outsourcing administrative tasks so fundraisers can spend more time with donors.

Today’s fundraisers are steering the profession toward a new future, and leaders would do well to listen to what they want, says Trayce Weeks, managing director of strategy and advisory at Nonprofit HR, a consultancy that provides human-resources services to nonprofits.

“We have a tendency to not want to listen because ideas of emerging talent are very different than what we’ve been doing,” she says. “But that’s probably where we’re going to find our answer as to what successful organizations will look like in the next 50 years.”

Hope and Concern

The Chronicle’s survey included 685 fundraisers — 437 managers, 219 nonmanagers, and 29 people who worked in fundraising within the last two years — and asked how satisfied and supported they feel in their work.

The answers were a mixed bag.

Top Benefits Fundraisers Want

Percentage of fundraisers who chose the benefit among their Top 5

The good news: Respondents were somewhat or very satisfied with flexibility in dealing with family and child-care issues (92 percent), feeling that their work matters to the organization’s mission (88 percent), and access to professional development (79 percent).

But the survey also showed areas in which fundraisers felt stressed or unsupported. They felt somewhat or very strongly that there is tremendous pressure to succeed (94 percent), there should be more time to focus on meeting with donors (91 percent), and fundraising roles are underappreciated (82 percent).

“I’m completely burned out,” says Lilah Walker, development director for Abused Women’s Aid in Crisis, a domestic-violence shelter in Alaska. Between the pandemic, a statewide recession, and an exodus of residents, it’s been hard to fill vacancies. Her department was short-staffed for several months, so Walker did the work of a three-person team.

“It’s really hard to feel like you’re doing anything well,” she says. “It feels like you’re just keeping everything afloat, and you don’t get those wins. And when you do get those wins, it’s hard to take the time to celebrate and to get excited and to feel good because you have this pile of other things that need to get done.”

Understaffing helped push former fundraiser John Allen out of the field altogether. During his tenure at one nonprofit, turnover dropped the development staff count from 25 people to five.

“The workload skyrocketed,” Allen says. “It turned from working seven-hour days into 10- to 12-hour days just to keep things afloat.”

Despite the extra work, there was no extra pay or praise. “It started going from really rewarding to just very stressful,” he says.

Fundraisers Feel Stressed and Underappreciated

Percentage of fundraisers who said they strongly or somewhat agree

He left that job for another nonprofit fundraising position. It was still long hours, but he primarily worked remotely — until the organization began to require four days a week in the office. That was the final straw. Allen is now a brand ambassador at a for-profit company. Representing the brand at various events, he says, he has more autonomy with his schedule, a chance to be more creative, interact more with people, and be outgoing. What’s more, the pay is better.

The pay discrepancy between nonprofit and for-profit work isn’t unusual. “The big elephant in the room is compensation,” says Weeks, at Nonprofit HR.

Allen, who is in the Boston area, says he knows entry-level fundraisers who are so financially squeezed that they rely on some of the social services they raise money for professionally.

Now many fundraisers are rethinking what they want — and what they’ll put up with — at work.

“Covid brought us to our knees in so many ways,” says Yolanda F. Johnson, founder of Women of Color in Fundraising and Philanthropy. “People have really shifted their thinking.” They’re still dedicated and mission-driven, she says, but they also want to enjoy a fuller life.

Taking On Pay

As nonprofits search for solutions to the fundraiser hiring crisis, they need to face that elephant in the room head on: Organizations that can should increase pay.

Walker, at the Alaska women’s shelter, was only able to find qualified hires after raising the salaries of the open positions by 25 percent. Experts say that if increasing compensation isn’t possible, leaders should consider paying for professional development, offering remote work, improving health-care benefits, or creating performance-based bonuses.

Courtesy of Maegan Dyson

Maegan Dyson, who served as assistant vice president of development at the University of Central Arkansas until late last month, asked the university’s foundation board to approve bonuses for the end of the fiscal year. Her plan funds the bonuses for two years with money from administration fees collected by the foundation. After that, donors would cover the costs of the bonuses.

With Dyson’s departure, every position on her development team has turned over since 2020. Dyson believes a performance bonus plan is a great alternative when an organization can’t easily pay higher salaries. Some peers look down on the idea of bonuses, she says, and argue that nonprofit fundraisers don’t enter the profession to make money. But with so many of her colleagues leaving to take higher-paying positions, Dyson says that view is “old news.” She says performance-based bonuses can encourage retention by financially rewarding fundraisers who excel.

Inflation has caused very real financial concerns for employees, she says, and her university’s budget doesn’t have a lot of wiggle room for salary raises. Her bonus plan would offer cash rewards to fundraisers who accrue the most points for having meaningful interactions with donors, requesting contributions of $15,000 or more, closing gifts, and meeting their individual revenue goals. Each fundraiser receives additional points for winning lower-value gifts of $1,000 to $14,999.

Donor interactions are weighted the highest and total revenue raised the lowest. “We want the system to reward gifts brought in but also the overall work that is being done,” Dyson wrote in an email to the Chronicle.

“Why would we not reward our people to keep them?” Dyson says. “Because the higher our turnover is, the longer it’s going to take us to close gifts.”

Victoria Silverman, an executive recruiter, favors tying performance bonuses to benchmarks other than total funds raised. Revenue-focused bonuses create “an unnatural incentive on trying to encourage donors to give more,” Silverman wrote in an email to the Chronicle. Instead, she recommends bonuses that measure, for example, the number of donor visits conducted or number of gift solicitations they’ve coached board members through. Bonuses that reward a full team for across-the-board good work, she adds, are an even better motivator than individual bonuses.

Include Fundraisers in Decisions

Fundraisers want to feel like their voices are heard within the organization. This can include both big-picture thinking and day-to-day items. Allen, who left fundraising, felt frustrated because people on his team would suggest improvements that could help while the department was short-staffed, and those suggestions were routinely ignored. “Just getting people from the top down to listen was really, really hard sometimes,” he says.

In the Chronicle survey, some fundraisers complained about not being listened to as well. “I think the org just thinks we’ll continue to be successful because we always have been, regardless of the red flags we raise,” wrote an Oregon fundraiser.

Laura MacDonald, founder of the Benefactor Group, a fundraising consultancy, suggests organizations ask themselves a couple of questions to see if they’re including fundraisers. “Are they at the table when important decisions are being made that will affect the way in which they engage their donors?” she asks. “Or do they just simply get the order to raise funds after the fact?”

Loren Holmes for The Chronicle

Leaders, she says, should find ways to boost interaction between fundraisers and program staff and include fundraisers in important organizational decisions. That means focusing fundraisers less on revenue goals and metrics and more on the mission, says Patrick Salazar, founder of Latinos LEAD, a nonprofit that identifies Latino candidates for board and nonprofit leadership.

“Most really good fundraisers also need to feel that they’re doing the right thing,” Salazar says. “When they go home at night, it’s not the check that made them happy. That’s not fulfillment; that’s task accomplishment. Fulfillment is knowing that your work is resulting in better conditions for people in communities you give a damn about.”

It’s important to bring fundraisers to the table consistently and solicit their feedback year-round, says Weeks, of Nonprofit HR. Organizations, she says, should strive for cultures in which “everyone has a voice and that voice is welcome.”

Weeks praises nonprofits that replace the annual review with quarterly feedback sessions. Where performance reviews can feel punitive, she says, quarterly meetings are more collaborative. It’s a chance for leaders to hear how their team is experiencing workload and work policies and devise solutions to the problems that come up.

“It’s meant to build relationships and culture within the organization and actually move things forward,” Weeks says.

Develop Existing Staff

When Pennsylvania State University has senior-level openings in the development department, it aims to hire from within. “We’re in the relationship business,” says Richard Bundy, vice president for development and alumni relations. Holding on to employees means donors don’t bounce from one fundraiser to another.

During the last fiscal year, Penn State hired 51 fundraisers, 24 of whom were internal candidates.

With a staff of 600, Penn State’s development department has its own human-resources team that works on retention and provides professional development, attention that Bundy says is critical. Because many of the external hires are for entry- and midlevel positions, he says, it helps to have experienced senior staff.

“They can play that kind of on-the-spot coaching and mentoring role that the new-to-industry staff need.”

Ensure a Good Start

Fundraisers and recruiters say a key to keeping good fundraisers is to ensure their first weeks and months on the job include all the information and coaching they need to succeed.

This is especially true for new hires who start remotely, says Shaby Rosales, chief human resources officer at the Orr Group. Without the opportunity to observe how colleagues work in the office, she says, new hires are less likely to adopt the organization’s culture or work processes through osmosis.

“When all you have is what’s right in front of you on your computer screen, it’s really hard to pick up those other ancillary things,” Rosales says.

She suggests leaders write documents for new hires that outline aspects of the job that can be invisible for remote employees, such as workflow and culture. Rosales also encourages leaders to set up structured time for new employees to meet with colleagues across the organization or virtually work alongside a colleague with a similar role.

At the University of Arizona College of Engineering, where fundraisers split their time between in-office and remote work, leaders adopted a hands-on approach to training new hires who are just getting their feet wet in fundraising.

Margie Puerta Edson, the college’s assistant dean for development and corporate relations, says she and other supervisors are expected to check in often with their direct reports about how the acclimation process is going and walk them through essential skills they’ll use on the job.

Courtesy Margie Puerta Edson

“Some of it is really basic,” Puerta Edson says. “Like how do you send an introductory email to somebody to get a visit? Before it was sort of assumed, ‘Oh, everybody knows how to do that.’ Now we’re not assuming that.”

Flexibility Matters

Remote work options and flexible hours are the third and fourth most wanted benefits by fundraisers, according to our survey. They followed only paid time off and medical insurance in importance. Consultant Alyssa Wright says remote work is high on the list because it adds to work-life balance and reduces transportation costs — important in a period of high inflation. Plus, in large metropolitan areas, fundraising staff can get as much as three hours back in their day if they don’t have to commute.

She suggests being as flexible as possible, especially given the tight job market. “You don’t have much of a talent pipeline that’s coming up where folks are being cultivated like they used to be,” she says. “So having that flexibility is important.”

Wright also recommends hiring consultants or contractors to handle issues like database management or proposal writing to give fundraisers more time to focus on donor relationships — something fundraisers in the Chronicle survey said they craved.

“There are folks who love scheduling, administrative work — the small operational tasks that surround development,” Wright says. She adds that some consultants manage databases for similar charities in a region, like animal shelters in Idaho, allowing fundraising staff to focus on donors.

Walker would have relished the opportunity to hire an outside organization to do back-office work when she was short-staffed at the women’s shelter because at the time, she felt bombarded by wearisome but necessary tasks.

“You’re doing all these things that you don’t want to do and that don’t fill your cup,” she says. “I would really like to be a fundraiser, and that’s what I love. When you don’t get the opportunity to do that, it takes a mental toll on you.”

Set Realistic Expectations

Organizations must have realistic expectations about what their fundraising staff can do and adjust expectations when there are vacancies.

Often, misperceptions about how much can be achieved start with the board, says Silverman, the recruiter, who previously raised major gifts for 35 years. Trustees sometimes assume raising money is simple and set overly ambitious goals instead of deferring to the expertise of an organization’s fundraisers.

Leaders and trustees may not be able to meet the same fundraising goals if their development team is not fully staffed, adds Karin George, managing principal at Washburn & McGoldrick, a fundraising consultancy for schools and colleges.

“We’ve got to really look at what it is we’re saying we’re going to deliver and have to make some choices and not do as much,” George says.

Expand Your Search

Fundraising leaders have long had a narrow definition of what they’re looking for in new employees. At the top of their wish list: significant fundraising experience.

“Now we look at a résumé differently,” says Puerta Edson at the University of Arizona. New fundraisers on her team include recent college graduates and former nonprofit marketers.

In the past, she looked for candidates with work experience at a higher-education institution, but now she filters for work experience at diverse and fast-paced organizations and an eagerness to be mentored. She also pays special attention to how well candidates fit within the existing mores of the college’s fundraising team.

“We’ve been really mindful about our onboarding because we realize that people are coming to us with different skills than what we’re used to, but they transfer well,” Puerta Edson says. “It’s on us to teach the culture.”

This approach is a welcome change, says Salazar, of Latinos LEAD. Too often nonprofit leaders use what he calls “magical thinking” when they searched for fundraisers. Organizations stack position requirements with every possible area of expertise. Jam-packed job ads discourage candidates who may have some but not all of the required experience from applying, Salazar says.

“Now and then you’ll find someone who can do a lot of that; rarely will you find anyone who can do it all,” he says. “What you should be looking for is someone who can prioritize and focus on what your strategic priorities are and then bring in other folks or develop the other work areas.”

Juan Diego Reyes for The Chronicle

It’s a lesson Jackie Blevins-Johnson, development director at the Barter Theatre, learned the hard way.

She spent six months searching for a candidate who ticked all the boxes on her carefully crafted job description for an associate director of development at the 89-year-old theater in Abingdon, Va. She wanted candidates with five to 10 years of fundraising experience and knowledge of major gifts and planned giving. What’s more, she wanted to hire someone she could trust as her successor when she retired.

After finding few qualified candidates, Blevins-Johnson regrouped. She asked herself what she hoped to find — not in terms of professional experience but in characteristics and values. By widening her search beyond fundraisers, she found her new associate director: Rebecca Mashburn, who had more than 20 years’ experience in management and sales in the furniture business.

“She came with a toolbox that not only surprised me, but the way in which she uses those tools are perfect for fundraising,” Blevins-Johnson says of her future successor, who started at the theater in May.

She’s particularly impressed with Mashburn’s ability to nurture relationships with new and longtime donors — a skill she credits to Mashburn’s sales experience.

Mashburn says the transition from sales to fundraising has been seamless. Blevins-Johnson has given her the time, space, and support she needs to learn a new profession; she told Mashburn she expected it to take a full year for her to become a proficient fundraiser.

“It really made me feel more at ease in accepting the job,” Mashburn says.

Donors Mashburn is responsible for nurturing have already doubled their gifts, Blevins-Johnson says, thanks to opportunities the two fundraisers developed together to spark interest — including opening-night dinners and private tours of the theater.

Mashburn also created a gratitude booklet to send to donors, collecting testimonies from actors and audience members.

“When you deal with people in the furniture industry, it is a cultivated relationship and you build on those relationships and you foster those relationships and you want them to keep coming back to you,” she says. “I thought that this would be a good way to show our donors our gratitude and how thankful we are.”

These early successes have bolstered Mashburn’s confidence as a fundraiser and tied her closer to Barter Theatre’s mission. “I’m hoping to finish my career in fundraising,” she says. “And I’m hoping to finish it with the Barter.”