The Key to Hiring Fantastic Fundraisers?… Treat Them like Major Donors!
Are you trying to recruit a fundraiser and find yourself facing the following hiring challenges?
You posted your frontline fundraiser or advancement leadership position and had little to no qualified candidates apply.
Other organizations are nabbing up your potential applicants by providing higher salaries than you are able to offer.
Congratulations! – you have the salary line available to hire a fundraiser on your team. That deserves a celebration all on its own. Securing headcount for fundraising staff or leadership can often be a tremendous battle, especially in resource tight organizations – well done!
Now that you are trying to recruit for that position are you finding yourself desperately tearing out your hair because qualified candidates are not applying?
You are in good company (unfortunately) and are facing steep competition…
The U.S. Bureau on Labor Statistics projected that there are about 10,000 openings for fundraisers each year, on average.
A 2013 report by CompassPoint Nonprofit Services and the Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr., Fund confirms what so many of us have experienced first-hand: Over half of nonprofit executives reported failing their most recent Director of Development search due to a lack of enough qualified candidates with the necessary skills and experience. – That was over 10 years ago and I think that it’s only gotten harder to recruit good-fit fundraisers over the last decade.
Despite the odds, if I can do this, you can do this!
Case in point: When I began my role as AVP of Development at San Jose State University, due to positions being frozen in a budget crisis, changes in leadership and turnover, I found that I had vacancies in 25% of my 22 person fundraising team and with multiple retirements looming I knew it would only get worse. I did not have the budget to hire a recruitment firm for all of those positions. I was worried that with the economy and state government financial constraints that those positions may get frozen again within a few months so I had to act fast to bring in great fundraisers for my team while I still had the chance.
I had to act quickly, scrappy and smartly. I drew from what I have learned from my own experiences with wonderful recruiters (thanks to Mary Lou Youngblood at Cal Poly and Taylor Rieckens at Another Source!) and put my skills as a fundraiser to good use to expand my team.
Over six months I was able to hire fantastic fundraisers into each and every one of my open positions – a Director of Corporate and Foundation Relations, four Directors of Development, one Senior Director of Principal Gifts, a Senior Director of Planned Giving, a Planned Giving Coordinator, a Senior Director of Annual Giving, a Director of Leadership Annual Giving and an Assistant Director of Leadership Annual Giving.
I got so good at recruiting in fact, that Saint Martin’s University recently hired me to serve as executive recruiter for their AVP of Development. In two short months, using the methods I’ll outline in this blog series, we secured a phenomenal fundraising leader for SMU who adds so much value to their team and community.
If you apply your own fundraising skills towards recruitment efforts, you can defy the statistics too and secure a phenomenal fundraiser or advancement leader for your team.
How?!? Here is my guide to recruiting like a fundraiser, broken down step-by-step with useful tips, samples and resources.
Part 1: Develop a clear and thoughtful recruitment strategy
(Secret: it’s not all that different from developing a major donor strategy)
1. Before you begin: Before you go down the recruitment path, stop and really reflect on if you can promote someone from within.
Sometimes you have smart, hard working and talented teammates who just need to be invested in, mentored, or upskilled with professional development.
I have found that taking a chance on those rising stars within an organization always pays off in the long run, even if they have a steeper learning curve going into the position.
2. Articulate your value proposition: Think through and brainstorm with colleagues to write out the answers to the following questions.
Why should someone work for you/the supervisor and your team?
What makes your organization and team special?
What is the mission of your organization? How is the person in this role going to support that mission and make the world a better place?
How could working for you and your organization change the candidate’s life? What’s in it for them? Here are some possible answers:
Work/life balance - Flexible schedule or hybrid/remote work opportunities
Perks/benefits - paid time off, retirement funds, free tuition or quality health insurance
Leadership/management opportunities - supervising teammates, managing a board, serving on a president’s council or a university/development task force or opportunities to shape the future of your organization
Professional development opportunities - attendance paid and supported for webinar and conferences, mentorship or membership to fundraising associations
3. Establish trust: Be transparent, truthful and open from the start by thinking through how you can satisfyingly answer the following (sometimes) tough questions:
What does your organization or team do really well?
What are your current challenges as an organization? What are you doing or what is the plan to address these challenges?
Why is this position open? Is this a new role or, if not, what happened to the last person who occupied this job?
Why are there multiple job openings for this team posted?
How would you describe the culture of the team and organization?
Is there room to negotiate up on the salary or is the salary range posted hard and fast?
Is there an ability to have this position be partially or fully remote? What are the expectations around when this person needs to be in-person (i.e. number of days in the office, night/weekend events)?
What is your/the manager’s leadership style? What are the President, VP of Advancement and other leaders like in the organization?
What are the goals or KPIs (key performance indicators) for this position?
What are you expecting the person in this role to deliver in the first six and twelve months? Do you think these expectations are too high, too low or the right level?
Where is your organizations in both strategic planning and campaign cycles? What’s next and what is this person’s role (if any) in helping to strategically shape either?
4. Develop your ideal candidate profile: What are the “must-have” versus “nice-to-have” traits for this position (knowing that even great fit candidates may not give you everything you want)?
Does it matter if they are local and/or live in the community you serve?
Is it more important that they have a lot of experience in certain skill areas (i.e. major gift portfolio development and solicitation) or would having a breadth of experiences in their career/volunteer work be a bigger asset for this position?
What skill sets or assets are not as strong in your larger team that you would like an ideal candidate for this position to bring to the table?
If you work for a university, for example, is it important that they have experience working in a higher education fundraising shop or is solely non-profit organization fundraising experience ok?
5. Conduct some quick benchmarking: Search online for open positions posted by your peer institutions/organizations to see how in line you are with what’s out there and make adjustments as needed.
Is the job title for this position (both level and vocabulary used) aligned with positions currently or recently posted at other orgs?
How are these other similarly leveled positions elsewhere described in the job postings? What language and bullet points do they use to describe the position, job responsibilities, expectations and skills?
What required and desired qualifications are listed? How many years and what type of qualifications are written as minimums to be successful for the position?
What salary range are they offering? If you are not able to meet or exceed the salary range competitors are offering for similar positions, what are you willing and able to offer to sweeten the pot (i.e. flexible schedules, remote/hybrid work, professional development opportunities, free tuition, retirement funds)?
6. Design a recruitment flyer to market the position: Feel free to use my recruitment one-page flyer template in Canva to adapt the design to include the following info and your organization’s branding:
Call out in the header: Organization, Job title, location, working model (in-person, hybrid or remote)
Description of the position, how it relates to where the organization is now and the vision for the future. Don’t forget to work in some of the selling points from your value proposition exercise.
Brief bullet points on the qualities of a successful candidate
Bullet points on opportunity (what’s in it for the candidate)
Top objectives for the first six months and one year
Most important tasks this position is tasked with
Top challenges for the organization and/or the position
Relevant links (i.e. mission/vision statement for the organization, bios on the team and/or organizational leadership, org chart(s), info on what it’s like to live in your geographic area, HR benefits offered)
Photos of the community/students you serve, the campus, the geographic area
You can use this flyer to send to potential applicants, share with your team or the board to encourage them think through their network, and/or pass out at local Association of Fundraising Professionals (AFP) or other events or conferences.
Phew… that’s a lot of strategic thinking but it will pay off big when reaching out to potential candidates.
Next time: Leveraging your prospecting and discovery skills to create a pipeline (stay tuned — blog post to come soon)
Does all of this feel like too much to personally take on given time, bandwidth and resource constraints that you are under?
I’m happy to talk about partnering with you as a recruiter to take on the task of finding your next phenomenal fundraiser or fundraising leader.
Get in touch with me!
Jen Stirling
Principal Consultant, Brighter Philanthropy
Fundraising consulting for higher ed and K-12
As your partner, I’ll bring my considerable expertise, high-energy efficiency, optimistic realism, relational approach, and fresh perspective to guide your team and help your institution reach its goals, enabling more students to thrive. I offer support for campaign services, development organization assessments, staff coaching and board development.
