Finding Great Fundraisers: Tips From the Experts

Look beyond fundraising experience.

Too many organizations “are chasing résumés with fundraising experience alone,” says Patrick Feeley, chief development officer at Caron Treatment Centers, a Wernersville, Pa., organization that runs substance-abuse treatment facilities. “We need to be open to nontraditional candidates.”

Four fundraisers who now work for Caron battled addictions themselves. “They bring that to the table with great success,” he says. “It is magical to see what they can do. Be open to candidates who have personal experience with your mission and transferable skills.”

Doug Picha, president of Seattle Children’s Hospital Foundation, says he’s seriously considering a 35-year-old lawyer, who is smart and articulate but has no fundraising experience, to solicit big gifts.

“He was personable and asked good questions,” Mr. Picha recalls. “If I see someone with a lot of talent but no experience, I find them very hard to pass up. You can give them what they are missing: experience and training.”

Still, he adds, “we are taking a risk, and he is taking a risk.”

To help the lawyer succeed as a fundraiser, Mr. Picha says he is considering paying another fundraiser to act as a mentor to the lawyer. And he would set goals for how many proposals the lawyer would provide to donors and how many gifts he should obtain during his first 18 months on the job, but he would set those goals lower than he would for a more experienced fundraiser.

Seek communicators and leaders.

Some organizations find it fruitful to look for new fundraisers who have a background in communications, journalism, psychology, or other fields in which people are trained to listen, a critical ability in working with donors.

“I look for people who are curious while also being very conversational,” says Eileen Savage, acting chief development officer at the J. Paul Getty Trust, which operates the Getty Museum. “I have hired former journalists,” she says. “They turned out to be fabulous in fundraising.”

Jean Gorman, the new director of gift planning for the Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital, who spent the previous decade at the University of Notre Dame, says she looks for leadership experience when vetting fundraising candidates. “The current senior director of planned giving at Notre Dame,” she notes, “was the student body president at St. Louis University.”

Athletes often make good fundraisers too, says Ms. Gorman. “Athletes work hard, and they are usually self-starters,” she says, adding that she herself was a competitive swimmer in high school.

“Swimming is all about deferred gratification, and it is tedious too,” she says. “Fundraising can be like that. It takes a while to get acclimated, but if people stay at it, they blossom.”

Involve young people in raising money.

Indiana University set up a special unit that teaches undergraduates about leadership by organizing and competing in fundraising events. The organization, which acts as a “feeder system” to Indiana’s fundraising operation, does much more than student events, says Curt Simic, president emeritus of the Indiana University Foundation.

Sixty-three percent of people who were involved in fundraising events as students now give to the university, compared with only 13 percent of alumni without that experience, says Mr. Simic.
What’s more, the university has hired recent graduates who participated in events to be entry-level fundraisers. Their job is not raising money, Mr. Simic says. Instead, they meet and speak with donors, then write reports about their interests and preferences so experienced fundraisers can approach them later for a gift.

Hire for compatibility.

Kent Dove, a colleague of Mr. Simic’s at Indiana University who’s now retired, says that he was many years into his long career before he learned an important lesson about retaining development officers: For optimum performance and longevity, he says, fundraisers who work together should like and enjoy socializing with each other.

“You’d be amazed at how important this is to keep a team together,” says Mr. Dove. “At IU we couldn’t have high-maintenance prima donnas. We needed low-key people who didn’t seek the limelight.”

After expanding the staff for one big campaign by “recruiting for talent, not for compatibility,” Mr. Dove says he had problems when some new hires competed with each other for donors or wanted all the credit for a big gift even though colleagues had a hand in it. That’s how he learned to hire like-minded fundraisers who collaborate and share credit.

The University of Michigan has an in-house talent-management team devoted to its fundraising operation. In addition to recruiting development staff members, they also create educational opportunities such as a course for big-gift fundraisers and a new six-month training for senior fundraising leaders. A big goal of the training programs, officials say, is to help fundraisers develop a strong network of trusted colleagues.

“We want to keep people here,” says Erin Hall-Westfall, executive director for talent management. “What we are trying to do with these programs is create collaboration. That is as much value as the content.”