philanthropissed

Every so often I google “fundraising masters” to see what the state of grad programs in fundraising is. Don’t get me wrong, I love my current job, but I like to keep updated on what’s going on in that arena in case I do eventually want to go back to school.

Sometime in the last year or so, Columbia added a Master of Science in Fundraising. It’s a 4-year night program that allows you to work full-time. As a Stanford grad who was not happy with the other options were (University of Indiana, NYU) I was excited to see a great school like Columbia offer a master’s in fundraising. I was even more excited to see that one of the mandatory classes was BUSI  K4010. Managing Human Behavior in the Organization.

It’s no secret that nonprofit organizations have a dearth of great managers. Fundraising in particular has this structure where, once you’re really good at raising money, your next promotion tends to be one where you manage people. But nonprofits rarely have the money to train good fundraisers in how to be good managers. So people who really have no business managing people wind up doing it, all the time.

My current manager is a good manager, and I tell her that a lot because I’m so grateful that I can’t help but gush about it. I think it actually embarrasses her. But to me it’s worth recognizing, because I and many of my friends raising money for different types of nonprofits have all experienced the misery of working for a bad manager. Most of these people aren’t purposefully awful; but they don’t know how to identify with and motivate their employees, have no people skills, and are generally afraid of change and content with the status quo. It doesn’t matter that they don’t intend to suck, the net result is the same – bad management, unhappy and unfulfilled employees, high turnover. And turnover is so common (the average lifespan of a fundraiser is 18 months per nonprofit) and such a hindrance to fundraising programs, especially in small development departments, that this is something we should be worried about.

So I am very excited to see Columbia cognizant of this problem and making a management class mandatory. I hope it has a hands-on component so that each student gets a chance to see good management in action. Of course it’s not going to solve the current industry-wide problems in funding that make management training impossible, but at least the future fundraisers will be schooled in it a bit before they can make someone else’s job a crappy one. Every master’s program in fundraising should include a similar course.

Columbia is making me rethink my “never move to New York” outlook on life….

I’m taking a moment to file some acknowledgments (I use a binder for fiscal years; anyone else got a better system?) and I smiled when I saw a recent stack. The top acknowledgment was to a board member who is universally adored by our staff. One of our leaders who signed the acknowledgment not only signed it in a colored pen, but drew a hot sauce bottle on the letter and wrote “Tabasco cuz u r hot, baby.” Other letters go out with smiley faces, hearts, and exclamation points.

Maybe it’s just a function of working at a theater with a really playful brand, but it makes for a happy development gal when the leadership uses their authenticity so naturally like that. That’s how you build relationships – it starts with being real and accessible.

While it sounds like a big “DUH,” personalizing solicitations or acknowledgments can be a harder than it seems, and I’m glad that it comes easily to my current leadership.

More importantly, problems in effective personalization often point to more systemic problems at the organization. Let me end with an example or two.

Example #1: A former boss at a past organization would agonize over what he/she wrote on the acknowledgment letters and try to be really strategic, referencing life events or that their kids went to the same school, etc. He/she spent too much time trying to engineer relationships where they didn’t exist yet – and because he/she wasn’t being authentic, I thought many of the “personalizations” fell flat  or otherwise felt faux. It was too much, too soon for most of the donors – which was the story of our development efforts.

Example #2: Another former manager who was chief development officer thought he/she ran a tight development ship – but acknowledgments were never hand-signed, much less personalized by anyone in staff or volunteer leadership. It was a matter of volume – an organization with thousands of annual donors. But if volume keeps  you from being effective or taking minimal strides to create good relationships, then you know what? You don’t have enough development staff. And if you asked anyone in development at that organization, where the development staff numbered in the teens (versus four at the org above and just me at my current job), 80% of them or more would have told you they felt overwhelmed by their workloads.