Path to the Profession

By Toni Coleman

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©2012 Jing Jing Tsong c/o TheiSpot.com

Joseph Sutkowi's summer internship at the University of Michigan's Office of University Development more than two years ago was meant to be a short stop on his path to a dream job at a foundation. He had some experience as a grant writer and wanted to learn about fundraising.

"I hadn't planned on a career in development. I didn't think there was anywhere to go," says Sutkowi, who learned from the intensive program of work projects, philanthropy classes, and career development sessions that there was much more to development than he imagined. Now in his first year as a development associate helping U-M faculty win foundation support for their work, Sutkowi is one of the 30 alumni from U-M's development internship program to find a career in advancement.

To address the challenge of finding talented fundraisers, "we decided to grow our own," says Erin Hall-Westfall, executive director of talent management at U-M, explaining the 2005 origins of the paid internship program. It was launched a year after the university's development shop founded the talent management office to coordinate hiring and training of staff across the 19 schools and colleges and 22 units that make up the Ann Arbor institution.

The competitive summer internship program is part of the institution's multipronged approach to finding talent. A public development careers website features, in addition to job postings, stories from staff about why they chose a career in development at the university. At monthly philanthropy career chats, staff representing a range of development functions from planned giving to stewardship provide an introduction into the world of university advancement to candidates with no fundraising history—including university employees in other units—as well as experienced fundraisers from local nonprofits. An internal database of vetted candidates that the department has stayed in touch with allows the university to fill positions quickly. An employee-referral program provides a financial incentive for staff to recommend friends who might make a good fit.

"Instead of the post and pray [approach], institutions now have a clear recruitment strategy," says Jon Derek Croteau, a senior consultant at executive search firm Witt/Kieffer, referring to the move away from the passive practice of hoping quality candidates respond to recruitment ads.

A growing number of institutions are being more deliberate about bringing in fundraisers who fit the culture of the development department and about assessing skills and providing training that fill specific needs. Development shops are paying more attention to cultivating their staffs, staying attuned to employees' needs and creating career paths that keep them challenged and in their seats.

"The whole area of talent management has evolved considerably over the last five to 10 years," says Tom Mitchell, vice president for development and alumni affairs at the University of Florida. "Advancement shops around the country are spending more time today thinking about talent management than they ever have in their history. Many more are moving toward a proactive strategy to really integrate their talent management strategy with their business strategy."

Toward that end, his institution created a new position—associate vice president for talent management, strategy, and planning—to align development talent with departmental goals and put in place succession plans for mission-critical positions.

Institutions will likely continue to invest in talent management as it becomes more difficult in some regions to find seasoned fundraisers, who often come at a premium, and too costly to lose effective ones already on staff. The available pool of "movable talent" is small as the weak economy fuels anxiety among top fundraisers about changing jobs, particularly if they need to sell a home or are part of a two-income household. In some markets, nontraditional talent will get a second look, but institutions will have to set them up for success with training programs and mentoring.

Mitchell sums up the challenge facing educational development shops: "You've got to retain your best, you've got to develop your talent, and you've got to find others who are equally talented."

A good fit

As hiring picks up following the Great Recession, development leaders want to know where to find quality people and how to hold on to proven fundraisers. Those two issues go hand in hand, Croteau says, since "retention starts with sound hiring."

Sergio Gonzalez, senior vice president for university advancement and external affairs at the University of Miami, has found success hiring nontraditional candidates from other industries that cater to wealthy clientele. The University of Michigan has hired 51 staffers from its philanthropy career chats and 13 from its internship program.

The University of California, Los Angeles uses an in-house executive search firm model that has full research, recruiting, and client-management functions. Rather than waiting on resumes to come in, UCLA identifies candidates, including those at other institutions not actively looking, who might be a good fit for current and future job openings.

Whether they're developing their own talent, recruiting seasoned professionals, or tapping into the transferable skills of nontraditional candidates, development shops are paying close attention to a candidate's fit for the culture. A person bringing ideas for changing the department may not fit into a hierarchical one steeped in tradition.

"Fitting the style of the manager, fitting the style of the staff, there is a lot to be said about that," says Amy Rueda, director of strategic talent management for UCLA Development. "There is no book anywhere that can give you the formula for fit."

King's College London spent years crafting its fit formula—based on interviews with staff about what makes the department effective—and has formalized it into the interviewing process. "We decided to do core-values interviewing alongside our skills-based interviews. Core values refer to the way we work around here," says Jennifer Cormack, director of university fundraising. When a position comes down to two or three finalists who have distinguished themselves on the basis of skill, staff members interview them about their values and behavior through questions concerning potential work issues, focused on how the candidate acted in the past and why.

For instance, staff members ask candidates to recall a time when they gave someone negative feedback. "One of our values is authenticity and having open and authentic conversations," Cormack says, so the ability to give and receive feedback is one indicator of a candidate's propensity to fit in at King's.

"Hiring is important to retention. It starts you out on the right footing," Cormack says. "It's important when you're making a jump in this economy that we get this right."

Officials at Harvard-Westlake School in California; the University of California, Davis; and the University of Florida also note the importance of a candidate's fit with the culture of the development department.

Edward Hu, chief advancement officer at Harvard-Westlake, says he values experience with his institution or another independent school over fundraising experience in general. Development staff turnover can hurt the school's relationships with donors, so it's important to have someone familiar with the culture, says Hu. "It makes a big difference to the donor [to know] that they can be related to immediately."

Developing talent

Besides ensuring fit, several institutions are finding that extensive training, mentoring, and career coaching are essential to fundraiser success. King's Knowledge is an ongoing, in-house training program for development staff that covers advancement-specific and general workplace topics like making the ask, working the room, and giving feedback. Cormack recently was a student in a course on how to frame feedback, a class she took with an intern, a fundraiser, and a prospect researcher.

UF fundraisers can shore up their skills through in-house courses like Development 101, Corporate Giving 102, Foundation Grants 103, and Gift Planning 104, which are taught by senior fundraisers. U-M's Philanthropy Academy, designed to improve the institution's fundraising effectiveness, includes a curriculum taught by development leaders and university faculty to help major gifts officers grow skills and knowledge specific to fundraising at the university.

Training becomes all the more important at community colleges, where oftentimes the person with the development title wears several other hats and cannot devote significant amounts of time to fundraising.

Leah Goss, vice president of system advancement at the Louisiana Community & Technical College System and executive director of its foundation, works to train staff as well as board trustees and presidents at the system of 16 public two-year institutions, of which eight have foundations.

She leads roundtable discussions and multiday training workshops that cover such topics as making an ask, putting a plan together, and aligning the goals of the foundation with the needs of the college. "I'm teaching chancellors and staff how to work more effectively with their foundations to communicate those needs," Goss explains. "I develop the talent that's out there."

Turnover trouble

Rueda knows UCLA's approach of recruiting experienced fundraisers may not win it many friends among institutions struggling to hold on to talent, but she says "talent management is not a threat to any institution.

"I know some institutions I would never be able to recruit from because their employees are so happy," Rueda says. "If they are going to leave, they were going to leave anyway. [Talent management] is helping to professionalize" the advancement field by forcing development shops to focus on how to keep their people happy and provide professional growth, she says.

Turnover is a major and expensive problem for development shops, although most don't always track the direct and indirect costs, says Penelope Burk, president of Cygnus Applied Research and author of the book Donor-Centered Fundraising. A recent survey by Cygnus shows that fundraisers under 30 stayed an average of 18 months in their most recent job. Burk, who has calculated the cost of turnover for several development positions, estimates that a gift officer earning $60,000 a year and who brings in $5 million in five years may cost an institution $371,000 in salary and benefits, or about 7 percent of the revenue raised. Replacing that person after just two and a half years with someone who stays the same length of time would cost the institution $743,000, or 15 percent of the $5 million raised during those five years.

There are several factors that affect those figures—direct costs (payout of accrued vacation, a higher salary for the new employee) and indirect costs (lost productivity during the first employee's wind-down period and the manager's time spent on the hiring process, training, and intense supervision during the new fundraiser's first year).

Burk's research shows poor leadership is among the main reasons fundraisers decamp for other positions. Another reason is the lack of a viable path for promotion, something cited by star fundraisers in particular.

Moyra Doyle of Richmond Associates in the U.K. agrees, noting that "not enough time is spent managing the high fliers. They don't feel their career can go anywhere in the institution. The first time they talk about dissatisfaction is when they leave. Managers need to really think carefully about who their best stars are and how to retain them by having individual career plans. I don't think there's enough of it."

Valuing talent

Burk says one solution for holding on to talent is "to change the structure so that people don't have to leave." Increasingly, that's happening.

During the 18 years Hu has worked at Harvard-Westlake, he's held four positions—three of which were created for him. "When we recognize talent, we create opportunities for them [so that we can] take advantage of that talent," he says. Hu credits professional development for the retention of longtime staff, including the senior advancement officer who has been there 16 years and the former annual giving director who was there 14. "We are still a small enough shop that we pay a lot of attention to individual needs," Hu says.

At UF, Mitchell is implementing a program similar to one he started at the University of California, Irvine, by creating individualized career maps for fundraisers that outline the roles and responsibilities they can assume over the course of three years. Career planning starts with a conversation like the one he recently had with an accomplished fundraiser at one of UF's small colleges. This valued staff member was looking for a change, having reached a fundraising plateau after seven years at that college. Mitchell and the fundraiser's supervisor sat down with her to find out how they could keep her.

"We just listened," Mitchell says. "She wanted a broader scope of responsibilities. She wanted to manage more people. She wanted to help plan the next campaign. What she's most interested in is professional growth and challenge."

All career maps are individualized and situational, Mitchell says.

UCLA, Michigan, and King's College have placed an emphasis on internal promotion. Over the last four years UCLA has installed a mentoring program in which key leaders talk in informal sessions about how they've grown their careers. Senior leaders who've been there 10 or more years serve as models for what a successful career looks like without having to leave an institution. "The philosophy is, you can have five careers at UCLA and never leave," says Rueda.

The benefit of internal promotion is "there's virtually no learning curve for these people. That's where these things pay off. There's no loss of momentum in fundraising activities," says Judith Malcolm, senior director of executive communications in the office of marketing and annual giving at U-M.

Croteau has noted the improvement. "Traditionally, if you're a good fundraiser, you're promoted to management without training. We're seeing that the management track isn't the only way you can get promoted," says Croteau, noting the rise of career maps.

Experts say compensation is not the main reason people leave, but it's important. Organizations that have instituted pay freezes in the last few years will be at a disadvantage as the hiring market improves. "You can only expect people to be comfortable with [pay freezes] for so long," Doyle says.

That said, there are ways to reward staff members even when resources are limited. It depends on what stage they're at in their careers and lives. Someone may want more training, the opportunity to work on higher-level gifts, or to manage a small team—anything that adds to one's skill set for the future, Doyle says. Others may just want work schedule flexibility; they may need time to take care of children or parents or to go back to school or do volunteer work. "It really boils down to working out what motivates an individual and doing what you can to support" that person, says Doyle. "It's not the same for everybody."

Pipeline to the profession

Development leaders laud the ways the profession has grown and matured in the last two decades but note that there's more work to be done.
Premature departures of fundraisers can be traced to poor relationships with immediate managers, which is why Croteau says "leadership training is so critical. The profession should continue to focus on management and leadership training."

"The profession has to continue to develop a pipeline of talent," he adds.

Gonzalez of the University of Miami says there are benefits to hiring inexperienced fundraisers who know the local community and can build relationships within that community. While some institutions may prefer experience, there's a learning curve for both veteran and untested candidates. A seasoned fundraiser who's new to the area has to learn about the community, while an inexperienced fundraiser who knows the local community has to learn fundraising.

As a lawyer who worked in government, Gonzalez was a nontraditional candidate when he was recruited to the institution 11 years ago. He has since hired very successful fundraisers who came from other industries and had no previous fundraising experience, including one candidate he recruited from a high-end department store where she ran the bridal department. "I saw her in action. I thought her skills were transferable to our profession," says Gonzalez. "She was a closer. She managed her relationships well. She was very articulate, patient, and understanding of the needs of her customers."

Shaun Keister, vice chancellor for development and alumni relations at UC Davis, is a proponent of hiring new graduates who were trained at well-run annual fund call centers. "They have gotten their chops on the hardest calls, the hardest part of fundraising. If someone can do that successfully, they can chart a path in development as a career," he says.

Development could do a better job of attracting young professionals to the field by showing all the different possibilities, as Sutkowi saw during his Michigan internship.

"What [young people] need to see is a career path. We have to create structures that demonstrate how someone can come in as an entry-level fundraiser and create a ladder," says Keister, who is implementing a hierarchical system with five levels of gift officers, detailing duties and the metrics for success at each level.

The desire to build the pipeline, as well as properly train and retain talented fundraisers, should be more than wishful thinking. As Mitchell of UF notes, "the number of campaigns continues to grow, the size of campaigns [is] growing tremendously. The supply and availability of fundraisers [are] not there."