Strange Ideas about Fundraising Staff Accountability

Why is it that charities don't seem to provide much accountability structure for their fundraising staff?

This is something I see all the time in my practice and in my association with fellow fundraising professionals. From what I hear, and have the opportunity to observe firsthand in my clients, it seems that many nonprofit Boards and executives want to measure the productivity of a fundraising professional in terms of the amount of revenue generated for the charity. Horrors! What a thought!

But, seriously, consider, for example, the small nonprofit, or even the larger charity, struggling to enlarge and enhance fundraising capacity. Typically, the Board and executive are going to be out in the fundraising marketplace looking to fill the Director of Development position with someone who will come onboard cheap, but who will clear up their fundraising problems. So they're going to go for the combination of most experience they can get for the least money.

Isn't this a perfectly logical approach? But this means that "money" is a criterion to begin with, not building relationships with donors, not financial stability, not infrastructure building, not long-term financial success.

In other words, these boards and executives are looking in the wrong direction. The main consideration is only "how much money do we have to lay out, and how much money can that person raise?" That's the sole criterion; but this approach will only lead to more problems, as we have seen on numerous occasions. These people are buying fundraising professionals as if they were wheat, corn or automobiles: as if they were commodities.

The other little problem here is that these Board members and this administrator seem to want to do this as quickly as possible because they desperately need incoming revenue, new revenue, more revenue. They have a budget they need to balance. And, of course, they're concentrating on the wrong thing: not the financial health of the organization over time, not the forming of long-term productive relationships with donors, but the budget, the needs of the budget to be balanced.

So they go out and get someone with 3 to 5 years of experience whom they can snag for $35-$55,000, and they put that person in the position, and then tell them – not in the job interview but only after they're in the position – that they have to raise a quarter or half million dollars. And that they have little or no fundraising infrastructure in place with which the new fundraiser can work. They also don't say to the new-hire that the board has no intention of investing in any infrastructure either.

Sometimes, of course, they will mention the financial goal in the job interview. Then the candidate, wishing to please and wanting to get the job, will promise just about anything to get the job. Not wanting to offend in any way, the candidate doesn't ask the hard questions about "Do you have the fundraising infrastructure in place that will support the accomplishment of that goal?"

So here we are on day 1 of week two on the job and the truth is finally revealed that this organization is in trouble, needs to raise substantial sums of money through voluntary contributions, and doesn't have any fundraising infrastructure in place with which to do that job. They're counting on Ms. Newhire or Mr. Gogetem to do the job single-handedly and without the necessary support system. And the way they're going to measure success is whether or not Ms. Newhire or Mr. Gogetem helps them balance their budget for that fiscal year! That's probably why we have such a high turnover of development professionals. People are staying only 18 months to 2 years in our area!

This is nonsense, and the result of "muzzy" or confused thinking by boards and executives, but I've seen it so often. Boards and executives really seem to think that a new fundraiser on the premises can actually make up for their sins of omission – bad planning and lack of knowledge about the fundraising process. More than that, however, it is simply bad management practice, fostered by being in a hurry as well as being uninformed about the real nature of the fundraising process.

This is one of those areas, by the way, where boards should simply stand back and let the executive do the hiring and management. Boards typically cannot do deliberative thinking. They can brainstorm, they can tell stories, but they cannot think through issues and come up with a solution or a management process that makes any sense. Most board members haven't a clue as to what constitutes good fundraising performance in the first place. That being the case, board members should simply give up micro-managing: they should get out of the budget-building process and leave that to the financial officer and the executive, and get out of meddling in the fundraising side of things and leave that to the executive. Now all we have to do is get a well-informed executive in there!

But I digress. We need to focus here on what do we really want to measure in the fundraising process? What, besides the amount of cash in the till at the end of the year, tells us the fundraising process is really doing well? And, especially, what will separate out the difference between the effect that the performance of the fundraising professional is having on the organization's bottom line and the effect that the organization's bad planning and lack of investment in infrastructure are having? Charities are cutting their own throats with their current practices. More tomorrow.