Fundraising Directors - Are you harder to hire or harder to keep?

So, a bit of a departure from my usual story post, but this topic has come up a lot over the last few weeks so I thought I would just jump right in:

Why is the position of Development Director so hard to hire for?

• It is well documented that there is a high turnover of Development Directors (DD).
• Many CEO’s say they struggle to hire and retain DD’s.

This is my opinion. Just for background; I have worked in Fundraising for over 20 years, 8 of which I was a DD. I have worked in-house for charities and for funders, so I have worked closely with approximately 350 charities from start ups to big brands and all other shapes and sizes in between.

Yesterday, I googled job vacancies for DD’s, I read 32 job adverts and job descriptions (JD’s) for big, medium and small charities in 4 different countries (UK, America, Australia and Canada). And yes, I probably do need to get out more…

This is clearly not a scientific study by any stretch of the imagination. It is really based on my own personal experienced over the years and hearing from many others in the sector, the googling was just a check in for this article – but back to the ad’s and job descriptions:

• 100% stated the position was to grow income.
• 92% said the charity has ambitious growth plans and needed to raise the income to match (or words to that effect).
• 100% stated their service users are at the heart of everything they do.
• 77% did not mention donors at all – seriously zip, nada, nought.
• 100% stressed the need to be a team player internally.
• 5% referred to the DD’s role being external.
• 100% wanted a proven track record of fundraising success.
• 88% listed specific income streams, stating how candidates needed to have a proven knowledge and proof of securing high value donations.

For me, when I read these ads and JD’s three key BELIEFS leap off the page, which are:

1. Fundraising and donors are still a means to an end (for a large % of charities)

Charities have a dual mandate – (1) to serve their mission (2) to finance that mission, which means they have more than one essential audience. Let’s leave staff and volunteers out of this for now and just focus on service users and donors.

Often there is an incredibly strong belief that a charity must focus on its service users above all else, not to do so lacks integrity. This thinking puts donors and fundraising in a secondary position, a “necessary evil to allow the charity to do its real work”. This is not intended to be disrespectful or unhelpful, it is often a value that people hold very dearly.

Other charities believe they serve more than one audience. By believing “money moves the mission”, without service users there are no donors and without donors there are no service users. Donors, fundraising and service users are all integral to these charities, they operate as a whole.

It takes genuine and authentic relationships to grow income. If you truly wish to scale your donor relationships, being able to do so while hanging onto the belief donors are secondary is just not going to work, and puts your fundraisers in the middle of a rock and a hard place. Either be open to authentic and equal relationships or choose not to expand on your fundraising.

2. Fundraising is best when it is quick

Boards and Leadership measure fundraising success on short term metrics, increase annual targets to secure more donors, measure the total value of donations per annum, look at the return on investment per campaign/income stream and repeat the ones with the best acquisition numbers. There are rarely metrics in board reports that measure how the fundraising team are building trust, increasing retention, donor commitment or anything connected with lifetime value.  JD’s don’t request the candidate has a strong track record in identifying what the best lifetime value donors looked like at the start of their relationship with the charity, and how can they use that profile to find new look-a like lifers rather than the quick flash in the pans.

All fundraisers are measured on how quickly they can bring in new donors, but most fundraisers know these quick ones are quick to enter and quick to leave. Large numbers of one-off donations are classed as a successful because they meet the short-term annual targets (they also hone everyone’s skill around getting one off donations). But the long-term goal is to grow the income considerably. Make yourself comfortable between that rock and hard place – because you either hit the annual target at the expense of the long term one or focus on the long term at the expense of the quick metrics.

3. Raising more money will solve all problems

I wrote an article last week (which is below) about how charities that live hand to mouth think raising more money will help them reach a tipping point into “thrive mode”. The truth is if you do more of the same, you get more of the same. The same problems get bigger. If you want to grow sustainable income do not grow a bigger version of the fundraising department you have now –grow “a better version” of the fundraising department you have now, so it is able to evolve with your changing needs. But to do so you need to start laying a very different foundation.

So, that new place between the rock and the hard place should really be starting to feel like home about now – because now you can add, undertake all the fundraising activities that are characteristic of being in survival mode but expect the results of thrive mode.

The typical DD job description says:

Please come in and help raise much more money than we have now. Please make this money sustainable (usually unlike now). Do this by doing lots more of or being much more successful at “what we do now”. Please maintain an internal presence and feed the internal reporting machine (which is usually more command and control than monitoring and evaluation). Please do not prioritise donors or donor needs over our internal needs. 

The reality is:

To take a charity from survival mode fundraising to thrive or sustainable fundraising the job descriptions needs to say:

Please come in and help raise much more money than we have now. Please make this money sustainable (usually unlike now). Do this by shifting from what we do now to a growth model. Please start the transition by initially laying and testing the foundations for growth based on what we know works and what doesn’t already, and from there continue to test and build. Please maintain an external presence, to recognise how best to attract the right type of “already networked” donors to feed the internal intelligence machine. Please prioritise recognising and working with donors that best suit our charity, share our values, the ones we can nurture lifetime value from, so that we can build a reliable network of funders, who we can grow with. Donors are integral to our success and they are external – so cast that paint brush aside, forget those new curtains and leave this “middle rock”….

In my “rock free world”, the collective JD’s above would be tweaked to:

• 100% stated the position was to grow income – start the shift to creating the necessary conditions for growth.
  
• 92% said the charity has ambitious growth plans and needed to raise the income to match (or words to that effect). - The charity needs to shift from thinking “we need this for this” and then going out to find customers to match its products, to identifying and prioritising an already “networked” group of prospects who are capable of contributing to such growth, and then working with them to co-create products that nurture lifetime value.
• 100% stated the service users are at the heart of everything they do. - As are the funding partners.
• 77% did not mention donors at all. - 100% need to recognise donors.
• 100% stressed the need to be a team player internally. - This role needs space to be external and not to be sucked into the internal machine completely. The money is on the outside.
• 5% referred to the DD’s role being external. - As above 100% recognise the external requirement of this role. 
• 100% wanted a proven track record of fundraising success. - Growth success not survival success (it’s not the same).
• 88% listed specific income streams, stating how candidates needed to have a proven knowledge and proof of securing high value donations. - Experience of growing income by making the donor the engine of growth rather than the staff.

The upshot is many DD’s are hired by CEO’s and Trustees in survival mode who think they need to grow a “bigger version of survival mode” – BUT want to achieve thrive mode or even scale mode income results. In other words, advertise one kind of job, recruit for it, expect the kind of activities that go with it – BUT then expect a completely different result to be generated at year end.

So, the DD is left doing one job (survival) but expected to deliver the outcome of another (thrive), while also accommodating the charity’s strongly held belief that the donors are a “lesser” audience and need to operate within “your terms” (the very engine of growth is undervalued). 

I have heard the DD position dubbed the “revolving seat” within the Leadership Team. But I believe unlike any other position on the Leadership Team the DD is the only one hired to do one job BUT expected to produce the results of another.

I also believe CEO’s, Trustees and Leadership colleagues genuinely want the best for their charity and all their staff. People want to be successful, and no one is “out to get DD’s”. I think people are only guilty of being far too close to their own situation to see it, rather than being guilty of anything cynical.

BUT far be it from me to yell from the cheap seats – I come bearing a “framework” – yes, a new one – not the same as the “Fundraising Framework”. A new one with extra squares!

I have created a one-page PDF that lists the differences between the fundraising growth stages. 

Start - Survive - Systematise - Scale

(“thrive” buggered up the alliteration so it’s been changed to systematise).

If you want the kind of results I read about in the 32 job adverts then you are really asking for a shift into systematise – but if your JD is along the same lines as the ones above you are definitely still rooted in survive mode. The Framework is part of a much bigger programme, but even on its own it can help you to articulate or clarify where you are on your departmental growth journey.

If you are a CEO, Trustee or Senior Fundraiser and would like a copy of my one-page framework illustrating the “The 4 Stages of Fundraising Growth” and how one evolves into the next please Click HERE

Enjoy!