In the preface to “Ten Colossal Fundraising Mistakes” I stated that the “musical chairs” syndrome is rampant in the hiring of many fundraising professionals. Nonprofits waste a lot of time and money recruiting people who don’t last very long on the job…about 18 months on average, according to most analyses. It’s a serious and debilitating matter for the philanthropic field.

As an example, I talked briefly about one of my recent clients. This fine organization retained a respected recruiting firm to conduct a search for a top-level development officer. After a while, the executive director asked me to interview the recruiting firm’s top candidate. As the interview unfolded, red flags began to wave in my head. In just a few hours I became convinced that this person, however experienced, was wrong for this particular situation and I made my opinion known. I guessed that the candidate, if hired, would not last more than a year on the job. The client, understandably, was eager to get started after the long and diligent search and decided to move ahead, notwithstanding my cautions. After all, the recruitment firm was a good one and I could easily have been wrong. As I confessed in my preface, I was dead wrong. The new hire was dismissed after six months.

What did I hear? What did I sense? Why did I conclude that the candidate, with years of experience, good references and high enthusiasm might turn out to be a bad match for my client? There are dozens of signals I could point to. Let me discuss just a few.

All Nonprofits Are Not Created Equal

All nonprofit organizations are clearly not created equal. Some possess what I call, an affinity donor base. By that, I mean a group of potential supporters who have an existing attachment, emotionally, or intellectually, to the organization and are thus pre-conditioned to being supportive.

Colleges and universities, for example, have alumni and alumnae, the vast majority of whom have been through a binding emotional experience. Churches and synagogues provide welcoming sanctuaries and strong spiritual connections. Local and regional museums have members whose children benefit greatly from the educational resources these institutions provide. Community hospitals serve the health needs of people in the immediate region and often save lives. These nonprofit types fit my affinity donor base definition. In these situations development officers will almost always find it easier to access and solicit potential donors.

By contrast, there are countless nonprofits that do not fit my affinity definition. These are most-often national cause organizations. Such groups must cast a wide net to find, educate, involve, cultivate and ultimately solicit supporters without the historical and geographical ties that benefit affinity nonprofits. It is therefore understandable that a fundraiser, coming from an affinity-type organization to a non-affinity type, will often find the fundraising challenge quite different, and occasionally, daunting. And why not? Competition in the philanthropic world is fierce. And it is fiercest in the non-affinity nonprofit world where brand building and marketing require a very different mindset.

My client’s potential hire had worked primarily in alumni relations–raising money from graduates of a fine university. College and universities have deep affinity to their graduates. Half the marketing work is done by graduation. By contrast, my client was a relatively young, national educational and training organization. Its mission promoted an important and meaningful cause. But there were at least half a dozen other organizations out there purporting to do much the same thing. All these organizations were essentially competing in the same donor universe. This was a complex marketing challenge involving extensive prospect research, communications planning, brand building, materials development, special events, mailings and more–quite different from the candidate’s most recent work experience at an old and deeply respected university.

The candidate apparently came with a good track record and solid recommendations. Nevertheless, this disparity between past experience and new challenge concerned me deeply. I thought the candidate might feel like a fish out of water in this new and very different environment. More importantly, as our conversation progressed, I sensed overconfidence and a failure to understand the hugely different competitive challenges between the new job and the past experience.

What About the Budget?

After some general discussion, I asked a question I considered essential: “Aside from your salary, have you discussed the financial resources and budget that will be made available to you for staff, research, marketing, communications and other aspects of the job ahead?” I already knew that the organization was pinching pennies at every turn and that funds available for an aggressive development operation might be either limited or simply underestimated. I was surprised when the candidate confessed to never having even raised these issues.

I have learned that sometimes applicants for a job are reluctant to ask these questions out of fear of losing traction for the position. Often, they figure that if the salary is attractive (and in this case it was) the hiring organization will certainly be willing to invest significantly in the other resources required for success. I consider applicants naïve if they fail to ask about things that will almost certainly affect their chances for success. I have often advised clients to be wary if a potential hire does not bring up the resource issue.

Some months later I learned that the new development officer, instead of getting out in the field to work with leadership, network and meet prospects, was spending most of the time mired in planning while also writing foundation proposals, direct mail letters and undertaking other tasks that almost certainly should have been done by professionals skilled in these disciplines. Frankly, I never knew whether staying in the office to do these things was driven by lack of resources, or more by fear of going out after prospects not likely to be as welcoming as in the past. Whatever, the Board of Trustees—well aware that there is no money to be found in the office—became impatient. And the rest was history.

And Then Those Unasked Questions

The candidate knew that for several months I had been studying the problems of the organization. If I were interviewing for a position like this one, I would have loads and loads of questions. What are the key marketing challenges? What sort of leadership am I likely to get from the Board members? Are there any holes in the staffing that need to be considered? What are the priorities for research and a deeper understanding of our potential marketplace? What communications strategy is likely to be most effective? And so on.

I asked myself after the discussion whether I was being too harsh in my judgments on this matter and whether my reaction might reflect the bruised ego of an experienced consultant. But honestly, I find it strange when someone, interviewing for a position like this, would not want to probe into issues that would surely affect his or her success. First and foremost, I would want to know as much about the leadership as I could learn. I would certainly want to explore many of the marketing challenges in what would be a totally new and competitive fundraising arena. I consider good, hard, challenging questions the hallmark of a top fundraiser. A healthy dose of skepticism is very valuable in fundraising because, among many nonprofits, things are seldom as they seem. . But the candidate was clearly more interested in sharing personal perceptions rather than learning what I, with two months of study under may belt, might have observed.

In any event I soon realized that here, once again, was another potential game of musical chairs unfolding before my eyes. I was not surprised when, some time later, I learned the new fundraiser’s tenure was cut short by a disillusioned and impatient group of trustees. Subsequently, I also heard that the new hire was not considered “collaborative” by many on the staff and. pretty much out of touch with the hopes, goals and timetable of the leadership. I was not surprised; just disappointed that this fine organization–with outstanding leadership and a great program—fell prey to a syndrome I had seen over and over again. Musical chairs? Frankly, this is music I think nonprofits can do without.

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Several years ago a young, dynamic nonprofit organization asked me to advise them on future fundraising, marketing and communications strategies. My new client worked in a specialized area of training and education on college campuses. Funded over its first ten years primarily by a group of thoughtful, capable, devoted and financially committed trustees, the agency believed it was time to hire an experienced development officer to spearhead an effort to broaden support. The executive director was dynamic, articulate and totally passionate about the cause. A newly minted case for support and website were in place. Fundraising opportunities seemed limitless!

Before I arrived on the scene, my new client had retained an experienced recruitment firm to help find the new development officer. After a number of months the firm had identified several promising candidates. The executive director asked me to meet with the person considered to be the top prospect. Apparently the references had all checked out and there was a strong bias toward hiring this particular fundraising executive, subject in some degree to my opinion. The candidate and I set up a meeting. After just forty-five minutes warning bells were going off in my head. I conveyed my concerns and doubts to the executive director of the organization, citing a number of key issues that bothered me. I went so far as to say that I didn’t think the new hire would last more than a year on the job. My concerns not withstanding, the candidate was hired. What happened in the weeks and months ahead was fascinating and extremely relevant to anybody considering hiring a new development officer or, for that matter, anybody running a nonprofit organization.

In the chapter just ahead, I’ll tell you the problems I saw and how I came to my negative conclusions about a seemingly qualified candidate identified after a nationwide search. But first, to set the stage, let me give you some background for understanding why the red flags were raised in this job interview. Some years previous, I had written an article for a several fund raising journals entitled, “Why Development Directors Fail.” In that article I raised a wide range of concerns I suspect few nonprofit boards or CEOs fully understand…things too subtle to detect even for some of the well-respected recruitment firms. The article evoked a huge response from the nonprofit community. At my firm, the Taft Organization, we received thousands of requests for reprints. Subsequently, working closely with an associate at Taft, I wrote an entire book devoted to this very subject. We specifically addressed our concerns to the CEOs of nonprofits, titling the book, “How to Rate Your Development Office.” The National Society of Fund Raising Executives, today known as the Association of Fundraising Professionals, awarded our work, “best fundraising book of the decade.” It became an instant best seller at Taft’s publishing division. .

Why was the book so popular? Primarily because all over the nation nonprofit fundraising had become a game of “musical chairs” and nobody wanted to talk much about it. Nonprofit after nonprofit would hire a fundraising executive with high hopes of accelerating their annual revenues or succeeding at a capital campaign. But after some months, or several years, disillusionment would set in and it would be time to find someone else to carry the fundraising torch. In fact, studies at the time we wrote the book showed that the average tenure for a development officer was roughly eighteen months. No laughing matter. This game of musical chairs can be very disruptive, terrible for morale and, quite often, irrationally expensive. Believe it or not, little has changed regarding fundraising tenure, despite the efforts of professional associations to legitimize fundraising through accreditation programs, lofty titles and all kinds of other cosmetics. Average tenure today is still under twenty months, according to my analyses.

I’ve seen the same scenario again and again: hope and excitement, followed by puzzlement, then impatience, finally turnover and a new search for the holly grail. Perhaps by now you’ve guessed what happened to my client and my prediction that the new hire wouldn’t last a year. I was wrong. Turned out to be six months. Followed by a negotiation over the $60,000 fee my client had paid the recruiter. Finally, a new search…a new beginning.

As you proceed with excerpts from “Fifteen Mistake,’ I’ll explain in more detail what I saw that led me to my early conclusions. And I’ll tell you what you need to know to make the right hire. Then, in each chapter, I’ll describe colossal fundraising mistakes I’ve seen countless nonprofits make, how these mistakes can negatively impact your fundraising success, and how to avoid them. Welcome to the Taft Organization website. Stay tuned!

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