When you talk to both experienced and new fundraisers about their career trajectories, almost all mention the important role mentoring played.
“I credit everything I’ve learned to people I’ve met with and formed relationships with,” says fundraiser Sean McCarthy. " It’s not something I did on my own. It is definitely something that I achieved by meeting with others, by seeking their advice, by benefiting from their mentorship.”
But some young fundraisers aren’t finding the same guidance that helped McCarthy reach his position as associate director of institutional giving at the Center for American Progress. Instead, they struggle to find mentors who can advise them in
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When you talk to both experienced and new fundraisers about their career trajectories, almost all mention the important role mentoring played.
“I credit everything I’ve learned to people I’ve met with and formed relationships with,” says fundraiser Sean McCarthy. " It’s not something I did on my own. It is definitely something that I achieved by meeting with others, by seeking their advice, by benefiting from their mentorship.”
It isn’t always easy to find a mentor, but the benefits are worth the effort, say early-career and veteran fundraisers.
But some young fundraisers aren’t finding the same guidance that helped McCarthy reach his position as associate director of institutional giving at the Center for American Progress. Instead, they struggle to find mentors who can advise them in a profession where people largely learn by doing the work and meeting with donors.
But finding a mentor in a world of busy later-career professionals doesn’t have to be an impossible dream, say fundraisers who’ve been both mentors and mentees. They offer advice on how to make it happen:
Get Involved
Brittany Wade came into fundraising after working at jobs in the travel industry that didn’t fulfill her, including coordinating trips for a real-estate company. Her administrative skills helped her land an entry-level job as a philanthropy coordinator at the Palm Beach Zoo & Conservation Society. Without a fundraising background, she had to work hard to catch up on all she didn’t know.
“I encourage people to look outside their organization,” Wade says. She leaned on local groups, becoming active in her local Association of Fundraising Professionals chapter and another local organization, the Executive Women of the Palm Beaches. She’s been able to meet people with a variety of skills who have provided advice and mentoring.
Christen Blackledge, another transplant to fundraising, was unsuccessful in her initial efforts to find a mentor. She finally found the guidance she was looking for when she got involved in groups like AFP and the African American Development Officers Network. While some people want formal mentoring programs, as some AFP chapters offer, Blackledge has found that a lot of mentoring relationships develop the more you put yourself out there and connect.
“As you volunteer with different committees and different events, you just forge those relationships organically,” she says. “It becomes a more organic and informal mentor relationship.”
Paying attention to who’s in those rooms can help you identify people you want to connect with and eventually seek counsel from, says Madeleine Durante, associate director of donor acquisitions at the ACLU.
“When you are in a room and you see someone who is conducting themselves in a way where you seek to emulate them, just go out on a limb and pursue their mentorship,” Durante urges.
Cast a Wide Net
While close mentors often develop long-lasting one-on-one relationships, there is also value in having those not-as-close but really helpful fundraising mentors in your arsenal, says Max Harper, director of development and planned giving at Butler University Advancement.
“Having a Rolodex of attorneys, financial advisers, financial planners that I can call on and ask questions and just say, ‘Hey, this came up in the conversation. I’m curious to learn a little bit more. Can you tell me about it?’” Harper says. “We don’t need a 75-person personal board of advisers, but we want to have specific people that can help in specific ways.”
Warren Northern, who worked for health care nonprofits in a general capacity before moving to fundraising more than two years ago, has also found it helpful to develop connections with a wide array of fundraisers. He’s made it a point at conferences to connect with people who have knowledge outside his base of expertise.
“I try to make three or four really great connections,” he says. The goal is to have someone who is willing to chat if he needs advice “or if I need to collaborate. I can think, ‘Yeah, we had a really solid and authentic and genuine connection.’”
Ease Into the Relationship
Some newbies, in their zeal to find mentorship, are approaching potential mentors in ineffective ways, says Alice Ferris, a professor in the Nonprofit Leadership program at the University of Denver.
Capehart
Brittany Wade, annual giving manager at the Palm Beach Zoo & Conservation Society, recommends young fundraisers look for mentors outside their organizations. Above, the group’s DO at the Zoo! event, which Wade helped plan.
Some newer fundraisers, she says, are cold calling or cold messaging someone on LinkedIn and saying, “Would you be my mentor?” That tends not to work, she says, because it’s asking for too big of a commitment.
Instead, Ferris recommends starting by asking for a call or short meeting to “see if they’ll have a conversation and give a little bit of guidance and advice.”
A lot of busy fundraisers are willing to go for that small bite, and if it goes well, Ferris says, it could turn into a longer-term mentoring relationship.
Ernesto Vargo II, CEO of Eskenazi Health Foundation, says he’s often willing to engage in short get-to-know-you sessions, both because he enjoys doing it and because that’s how he accumulated some of his early knowledge.
“Most people are flattered if you ask them if you can have a little bit of time to pick their brain and learn from them,” Vargo says. “I can remember years ago when I did that, and many of those people became good friends of mine.”
Whether mentoring is deeply involved or more episodic, it serves as a boon to young fundraisers’ careers and can help keep them in the field.
“The ability to have real relationships with people whose opinions you trust, who you respect, who you feel like you can turn to when things are really hard,” says the ACLU’s Durante, “that is how you stay in the work.”