More than half of donor-relations professionals and other fundraisers — 55 percent — said in a new survey that attempts to improve diversity, equity, and inclusion at their nonprofit had not changed how they build ties with donors. Thirty-five percent said their organization had made changes “in light of diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts.”
Lynne Wester, principal of the fundraising consultancy Donor Relations Guru and director of the survey, worries that fundraisers will start quitting if their organizations don’t try to connect with a more diverse group of donors. “We are not ripping the Band-Aid off fast enough,” she says.
The online survey polled more than 3,000 donor-relations professionals and fundraisers about their job responsibilities, the organizations they work for, and their thoughts on philanthropy. The survey makes a distinction between the responsibilities of fundraisers — who appeal to donors for gifts — and donor-relations professionals, who keep in touch with donors after fundraisers request a gift, such as by writing thank-you notes or writing reports on the impact of their gifts.
While the biennial survey is not statistically significant, it offers a glimpse into what’s on the minds of development professionals. Wester, who began the survey in 2013, added several new survey questions about how the pandemic and renewed calls for racial justice changed the nonprofit sector in 2021. Among respondents to the most recent survey, 55 percent worked in higher education.
Wester says some nonprofits fear donors will pull their dollars if fundraisers change how they’ve always operated to be more inclusive. But she encourages nonprofits to pursue equity in their fundraising practices. “If this is what we truly believe, then we kind of have to stand up for our morals and our values here and not let them be sacrificed.”
‘The Doers Are Leaving’
The survey also asked fundraisers and donor-relations professionals about staffing at their organization. One in five said their fundraising team had lost at least one member during the pandemic, primarily because they quit or retired.
Most departing employees are associate directors and assistant directors of development, Wester says. They complete critical tasks like crunching donor data and writing reports on fundraising campaigns. “The doers are leaving,” Wester says. “They’re leaving because we’re not flexible.”
More than 40 percent of respondents said they were part of a team of fewer than 10 fundraisers. Twenty-one percent of respondents said they were the only employee handling donor relations at their organization.
Wester says she’s begun recruiting new employees for her clients from the hospitality industry, which also requires strong interpersonal skills, to replace departing donor-relations professionals. “It’s not that there’s a pipeline coming out of college,” she says. “I’m stealing them from another industry where they were more poorly treated, so our jobs are a step up from from those jobs.”
Organizations that offer opportunities for remote work and higher salaries are more likely to hold on to their staff, experts say. The bulk of survey respondents — 67 percent — said their fundraising teams held steady during the pandemic. Another 11 percent said they actually hired more fundraisers during the public-health emergency. Still, Wester worries about what will happen if workplaces don’t give fundraisers more choice in where and how they work.
As in previous surveys, the vast majority of respondents said they hoped to stay in the donor-relations field in the next five years. That share peaked at 74 percent in 2017. In the most recent survey, the share of respondents who wanted to continue in donor-relations work held steady despite the pandemic. Sixty-seven percent of respondents said they wanted to stay in 2021, compared with 66 percent in 2019, the last year that Wester conducted the survey.
