Rhode Island Public Radio posted an ad a few months ago seeking a new top fundraiser. Yet the title of the position might have left job-seekers scratching their heads. What, they perhaps wondered, is a “chief progress officer”?
Beware, traditionalists: Nonprofits are messing with the time-honored nomenclature of fundraising. Position titles such as “chief development officer” and “major-gifts officer,” in use for a half-century or so, are being tossed aside for a range of alternatives, including puzzlers like “inspirational-gifts officer.”
Kim Klein, a consultant for many social-change nonprofits, worries that the evolution of titles signals a broader effort among charities to give a high gloss to anything financial.
“There’s a movement to avoid using any words that have to do with money, as though money were a dirty thing,” she says. “But I think the whole job of fundraising professionals is to say, ‘Money is a tool. We need it to do our job.’ Why pretend that isn’t the case?”
Nonprofits insist they’re moving to job titles that more accurately represent what fundraisers do. They say they want to eliminate confusing jargon and send a clear signal that both donors and fundraisers have critical roles in doing good.
These arguments echo the rallying cries of nonprofit leaders who want to rebrand the field itself. Robert Ross, head of the California Endowment, has lobbied to call it the “delta sector,” for the Greek letter that represents change.
Charity advocate Dan Pallotta has put forward the “humanity sector,” arguing that the “nonprofit sector suffers from the distinction of being the only sector whose name begins with a negative.” He also suggests that fundraising “should really be called civic-engagement building.”
‘Director of E-Philanthropy’
Nonprofits appear to have grown particularly fond of adding “philanthropy” to fundraiser job titles. In the past five years, Chronicle advertisements for development positions that include that word in the title have grown by 80 percent. Adopters include old groups (March of Dimes, Camp Fire USA), new groups (ClimateWorks, Gavi Campaign), big groups (Nature Conservancy, American Heart Association), and little groups (Union Theological Seminary, Lutheran Service Society of Western Pennsylvania).
Nonprofit employee rosters now feature vice presidents of philanthropy and philanthropy-services managers. Officers for institutional philanthropy and individual philanthropy. Top-ranked chiefs of philanthropy and low-level philanthropy coordinators. A few organizations even boast directors of e-philanthropy, a marriage of locution from the digital age and ancient Greece.
Many charities have embraced “philanthropy” because they see “development” as an outdated misnomer. For much of the 20th century, most fundraisers were called just that: fundraisers. But sometime in the 1950s and 1960s, universities introduced the term “development office” as they brought together staff members responsible for “developing” the institution and its programs, according to Dwight Burlingame, a professor at Indiana University’s Lilly Family School of Philanthropy and author of Philanthropy in America: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia. These included fundraisers but also alumni-affairs and public-relations officers.
Today, however, the term simply confuses donors, says Jerold Panas, a consultant who, after decades in development work, is urging clients to switch to “philanthropy.”
" ‘Development’ for a lot of people just doesn’t mean anything,” Mr. Panas says. “What do you develop? Shopping centers?”
New research supports the notion that titles with traditional names like “development” or “advancement” aren’t effective with donors. Russell James, director of graduate studies in charitable planning at Texas Tech University, tested 63 job titles in a survey of more than 3,100 respondents. He found that all titles with “development” and “advancement” were among the 10 least likely to prompt a donor to contact an institution about a stock or planned gift. “Traditional institution-focused job titles are both the most commonly used and the worst performing,” Mr. James writes.
Seeking a Softer Tone
Other nonprofit leaders say “development” has increasingly puzzled donors as international-development groups have boomed and the phrase “developing countries” has become commonplace.
The University of Kentucky last fall rebranded its development operation as the “Office of Philanthropy” — in part a recognition that an increasing number of major donors describe themselves as philanthropists, says Michael Richey, the head of development who now wears the titles of chief philanthropy officer and vice president for philanthropy.
“Philanthropy is a more pure, holistic description of what we are doing and what we are about,” Mr. Richey says. “People really know what you’re talking about when you say you’re a philanthropy officer.”
“Philanthropy,” he adds is also “a more professional term” that has a “softer tone” than development.
Investing, Not Giving
Some nonprofits retain the name “development office” yet bestow major-gifts officers with a title that includes “philanthropy.” At the Humane Society of the United States, they are called “directors of philanthropy.”
Betsy Liley, the group’s chief development officer, says the word “gifts” is not an appropriate description of major donors’ commitment or their role as partners with the organization. “Gifts are things we hope people like,” she says. “But when I’m a donor, I’m investing in something. I want to change the world.”
At Rhode Island Public Radio, major-gifts manager Erin Isabella recently morphed into “director of philanthropy and stewardship.”
“Her role is not to ‘manage gifts’ in the sense of having a spreadsheet and categorizing gifts as they come in,” says CEO Torey Malatia.
Ms. Isabella adds: “The word ‘philanthropy’ identifies what you’re doing but it also elevates what you’re doing. You’re asking the donor to look at themselves in a way that makes them feel like more than just a $25-a-year donor. You’re asking people to invest in you; you’re asking them to be a partner in your success, not just donate.”
Not everyone thinks “philanthropy” belongs on a fundraiser’s card. Ms. Klein, the consultant, calls its “pretentious and misleading.” Allison Gauss, a writer with Classy, an online fundraising platform for nonprofits, says she understands why fundraisers might want to avoid “development,” which doesn’t “exactly convey a warm and fuzzy feeling.” But she worries that an “office of philanthropy” could alienate smaller donors.
“With ‘philanthropy,’ you don’t think about the person who’s giving $25,” Ms. Gauss says. “You think about the person who’s giving $25,000.”
Some organizations are fiddling with job nomenclature in other ways. The Humane Society Silicon Valley assigned its major-gifts officer the title “inspirational-gifts officer” a few years ago after deliberating about how to approach wealthy donors who weren’t yet making significant contributions. Many of these supporters didn’t see themselves as big givers and even felt intimidated by the title “major-gifts officer,” says Stephanie Ladeira, vice president of development.
The new title, Ms. Ladeira says, opened doors and got phone calls returned. “It was actually a conversation starter. People say, ‘Oh, what is it that you actually do?’ "
‘Growth’ and ‘Progress’
The development staff at Teach for America-D. C. Region is called the growth and stewardship team. Executive director Adele Fabrikant, who changed the name shortly after she arrived in 2015, says it fits with her mission to expand the organization’s impact in the Washington area.
Nonprofits, Ms. Fabrikant says, sometimes view the development office as an appendage. “But for us, it’s a core function that’s necessary to everything that we do. That, honestly, is what drove the title change.”
Several staff titles at Rhode Island Public Radio have changed since Mr. Malatia, an innovative public-broadcasting veteran who helped create This American Life, arrived as CEO last year. “We eliminated ‘development’ as a word; it doesn’t exist here,” he says.
Mr. Malatia says his new chief progress officer will function much like a head of university advancement who is key to devising growth strategies. Yet he believes higher education’s lexicon simply doesn’t fit a small public-radio station.
" 'Advancement’ makes people think about the next new building or the next new wing,” he says. “We’re not building new wings or new buildings; we’re trying to increase and deepen our public service.”
