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….