Common Fund-Raising Hazards

April 08, 2008

The hazards of a fund-raising job are often not discussed in public, but in private, fund raisers say they face many obstacles. For example, many fund raisers have been sexually harassed by donors and others, says Collette Murray, an Indio, Calif., executive recruiter who has previously headed fund-raising offices at nonprofit groups.

“I had staff creating relationships; they were not good relationships but exploitative,” she recalls. “I had older men hitting on young females and older women donors cultivating younger men. You see someone spending way more time with a particular donor, and that is a clue.”

Another problem is a jealous spouse. Ms. Murray says that during her fund-raising career, she worked for two different men whose wives got upset about the time she spent with their husbands on fund-raising visits and solicitations. One of the wives invited herself along on fund-raising calls, while the other asked Ms. Murray to lunch one day and suggested that she resign.

But most on-the-job problems for fund raisers are more mundane: the botched solicitation, the stalled campaign, coworkers who don’t pull their weight. Those experiences and solutions to them, are detailed in the latest issue of The Chronicle of Philanthropy.

We’d like to hear about your worst experiences — and what you did to solve your problem. Use the comment link below this item to share your thoughts.

— Holly Hall

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