Fundraising Update

Welcome to Fundraising Update. This week, we look at the skills that fundraisers develop that are crucial to leadership positions. Plus, new research on what inspires younger generations to give.

I’m Rasheeda Childress, senior editor for fundraising at the Chronicle of Philanthropy. If you have ideas, comments, or questions about this newsletter, please write me.

Thanks to our sponsor DonorPerfect for supporting Fundraising Update.

Fundraising has become an increasingly significant part of nonprofit leaders’ and college presidents’ jobs. With that in mind, having a background in fundraising can be extremely helpful in making the leadership transition. How helpful? My colleague Jie Jenny Zou spoke with two leaders who started out as fundraisers about how that background is helping them succeed as organization heads.

At the age of 22, Matthew vandenBerg set his sights on becoming a college president. The idea came from working closely as a student with his own president at Michigan’s Alma College.

“She said, ‘Matt, I have a feeling in 20 years from now — which is when you’d be likely to get a presidency at the earliest stages — I have a feeling the only thing they’ll be talking about is money,’” vandenBerg says. “She was holding a crystal ball.”

Two decades later, vandenBerg is president of Ohio Wesleyan University, a private liberal arts college in central Ohio. Fundraising experience, as his mentor predicted, has become a top consideration, not only for higher-education leaders but executives across all nonprofit organizations.

“Every move I have made in my career has been in service to that goal of getting to exactly where I am right now,” vandenBerg says of his trajectory, which included stints as a fundraising executive and a head of alumni relations. Before becoming president of Ohio Wesleyan, he also served as president of Presbyterian College in South Carolina. “I use all the skills I have developed as an advancement professional every single day in this role.”

Paul Vernon

For people looking to take on demanding leadership roles, nonprofit executives and consultants interviewed by the Chronicle agreed that fundraising experience is key to success. They say candidates unfamiliar with fundraising may find themselves ill-equipped to handle positions that often call for frequent interactions with prospective donors as well as meeting big funding goals. Fundraisers also tend to have ample experience working diplomatically as part of a team and meeting tight deadlines — two skills that many say are fundamental to being an effective leader.

Don Hasseltine of Aspen Leadership Group says fundraising ranks among the top three skills his firm looks for when assessing job candidates for senior executive positions.

“When you think about expectations on an executive director or CEO of a nonprofit, a vast majority of their responsibility is generating enough revenue for them to function year to year,” says Hasseltine, who has held leadership positions at five colleges and universities. “Anywhere from a quarter to half their time is spent on raising money.”

Fundraising helped vandenBerg hone his financial acumen, build coalitions, become resilient, and work well under pressure. “You develop a source of bravery and sense of momentum,” he says. “Your job is to hear every no, every request for more time as another step towards getting to yes.”

As president of Sweet Briar College in Virginia, Mary Pope Maybank Hutson knows firsthand the importance of fundraising. Next year marks the 10th anniversary of a successful campaign spearheaded by Maybank Hutson and other alumnae to save the women’s school from the brink of closure.

For more on vandenBerg and Maybank Hutson, read Jenny’s complete article.

Share of adult Gen Z respondents who gave to charity in the past year

Millennial and Gen Z donors know who they are and what they want, reports my colleague Maria Di Mento.

They want to have a big impact on the causes they support, they see themselves as innovators, and they are especially eager to volunteer and collaborate, according to findings from two new studies, one that polled wealthy donors of different generations and the other moderate-income young donors.

“These are action-oriented change-makers, and they’re looking for ways in which they can truly partner and collaborate and participate,” says Gillian Howell, who leads advisory services at Foundation Source, a consultancy that advises private and corporate foundations and whose recent study, Shaping Tomorrow: How Gen Z and Millennials View Charitable Giving, examined what motivates and interests moderate-income donors from ages 18 to 42.

“They’re really committed to impact, and they’re not giving out of an obligation,” says Dianne Chipps Bailey, who leads Bank of America’s Philanthropic Solutions division, which released findings on Wednesday from a survey that compared the charitable motivations of wealthy donors ages of 21 to 43 with their older counterparts. “They’re doing it because of their conviction around the social change that they want to see.”

The causes these donors care about the most, according to the Bank of America report, include fighting hunger, poverty, and homelessness; supporting human rights and social justice; and addressing climate change and environmental issues.

Howell, of Foundation Source, says her group’s study found that 87 percent of millennials, which the report defines as ages 28 to 43, and 71 percent of Gen Z (ages 12 to 27) who are at least 18 gave money to charity over the past year. It also found that 58 percent of Gen Z respondents and 54 percent of millennial respondents volunteered. That data, Howell says, should pique the interest of nonprofits eager to engage the next generations of committed donors.

For more on the research, read the rest of Maria’s story.

• First DAF Day is in the Books. Last month, I reported on the growth of DAFs and how Oct. 10 was the first ever DAF Day, devoted to encouraging people to give to charity from their DAFs. So how’d it go?

  More than 1,250 nonprofits participated, according to Chariot, the company that organized the day. While not every organization has shared its data, the company says those that have saw increases: Susan G. Komen saw twice as many DAF gifts as their prior record. The ACLU Foundation, which launched a new DAF payment tool that day, saw a surge in DAF gifts; the average donation was $1,200.

  “We saw incredible engagement among nonprofit organizations,” says Mitch Stein, Chariot’s head of strategy. “All of the DAF Day numbers aren’t in yet, but the widespread participation, the number of donations, and the total raise is record-breaking. For example, our DAF partners that have shared results already saw a 4x increase in giving.”

  Did your nonprofit give DAF Day a try this year? If so, we’d love to hear your experience. Feel free to email me.

Kathrine Trine Grissom pledged $12 million to Ohio Wesleyan University. The money will establish the Mary Ellen Grissom Endowed Fund, which will provide scholarships to first-generation college students and pay for their room and board and other expenses, such as laptops, transportation costs, and medical bills. The fund is named for the donor’s late mother, who died in a car accident when Grissom was 8 months old.

Grissom credited a professor she had as an undergraduate at Wesleyan as the first person to detect a learning disability. After a formal diagnosis, Grissom saw her grades improve from C’s to straight A’s. “I believe I would have fallen through the cracks at any other school,” Grissom said in a news release.

For other notable gifts this week, read my colleague Maria Di Mento’s Gifts Roundup column To learn about other big donations, see our database of gifts of $1 million or more, which is updated regularly and has data going back to 2000.

Getting Anonymous DAF Donations? 7 Things to Do. Fundraisers and experts share their secrets for relationships with mystery donors.

The Case for Doing Away With the Charitable Deduction (Opinion). A tax code tweak that replaces the deduction with matching grants could encourage everyone to donate.

Fearful Corporations Stop Funding DEI. The Fearless Fund lawsuit became big news in recent months, because it was one of the first cases where an organization was sued because plaintiffs claimed using race as a criteria for doling out grants was discriminatory.

While the lawsuit settled last month with the Fearless Fund ending the grant program, but not admitting it was improper, it appears the ripple effects of the lawsuit and other anti-diversity sentiments have spooked corporate America. Many big corporations have stopped funding local nonprofit initiatives and internal grant programs that focus on increasing diversity, reports the Wall Street Journal.

“People have changed behavior because they are afraid of being sued,” Tynesia Boyea-Robinson, founder of CapEQ, an impact investing and advisory firm, told the Wall Street Journal. “If you lead with race, if you lead with gender even, and, sometimes, if you lead with sexual identity, you will be attacked.”

According to the article, of more than 60 small-business grant programs that in 2023 included race or ethnicity in their criteria, more than 40 percent no longer exist or appear defunct, and another 27 percent no longer use race or ethnicity in making awards.

Corporations may not be as responsive as in years past to nonprofits that have race, gender, or sexual identity as part of their missions. One note that may temper this is that corporations only provide 7 percent of all giving in the U.S., according to the latest Giving USA report. Comparatively, individuals gave 67 percent, foundations 19 percent, and bequests 8 percent. So corporations’ reluctance to give to these causes is restricted to the smallest share of the giving pie. (Wall Street Journal — subscription)