Revolving-Door Dilemma

By Elizabeth Schwinn and Meg Sommerfeld

In January, Rebecca Brown started her fourth fund-raising job in a decade. Each time she has moved, she says, she has increased her salary by $10,000. But the lure of additional income was not the sole cause of her job changes. Ms. Brown, now director of special events for the American Lung Association of Alaska, says she grew weary of becoming an organization's senior fund raiser after only a short time on the job because more-veteran people left. She also didn't want to keep finding herself in the role of mentor to younger fund raisers who came and went with great frequency.

"It was really disheartening, because you built up these work relationships with people and then they were gone," she says. She's hopeful she won't face the same problem at her new job, which she says has a more collegial working environment than other charities where she has worked.

Ms. Brown's frustrations are echoed time and again by charity executives, board members, and other fund raisers, who lament what they describe as the revolving door of the fund-raising profession. It is a problem that, at least anecdotally, appears to be going strong or getting worse, despite a weak national economy that has prompted people in many other professions to curtail their job hunting.

"The faces keep changing," says John Keightley, vice president for development and communications at Catholic Charities USA, when he meets with fund raisers for the organization. "You say, Where is Bob or Larry or Jane," says Mr. Keightley, only to learn that they have left for other jobs.

Little Action

Yet for all the talk of high turnover among fund raisers, the issue has received little recent attention from researchers, charity associations, or foundations. Few national studies exist to measure job tenure by fund raisers, and charities have few places to get advice on how to retain talented development professionals. None of the more than 100 sessions at the annual meeting this week of the Association of Fundraising Professionals is devoted to the topic.

Even at foundations that have made it a priority to help charities become more effective and efficient in their work, the issue of turnover among fund raisers is rarely discussed. Barbara D. Kibbe, program officer for organizational effectiveness at the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, in Los Altos, Calif., says that, while her foundation has made grants to help charities deal with turnover among chief executives, no one has asked for similar help on how to retain fund raisers.

Part of the problem, say some observers, is that charities too often underestimate the expenses involved in constantly having to fill fund-raising slots.

"Fund-raising turnover is one of the major issues that is frequently unacknowledged by the fund-raising community," says Mal Warwick, a fund-raising consultant in Berkeley, Calif. "It represents a major cost, and is one of the most significant factors holding back many leading nonprofit organizations from fulfilling their fund-raising potential." He adds that the issue is "really worth academic study" to give charities the facts they need to tackle the issue.

Just how often fund raisers change jobs is hard to measure. The Association of Fundraising Professionals found that about half of the 1,215 people who responded to a salary survey of its members had been in their current jobs for three years or less, a figure that has remained fairly constant over the years.

A study in the mid-1990s by Indiana University's Center on Philanthropy reported similar findings. Women fund raisers changed jobs about every three years, on average, according to the report, while men changed, on average, about every four and a half years.

Many in fund raising see high turnover rates as inevitable for a high-pressure profession, in much the same way that salespeople turn over frequently. "After 30 years of working in this sector, I've just come to expect that it's pretty turbulent for development professionals," says Paula Van Ness, president of Make-a-Wish Foundation of America.

But others say that no matter how true that is, such a perspective is what prevents charity leaders from seeking solutions to an expensive problem for organizations. "There are real costs in recruiting and training a new person," says Eugene R. Tempel, executive director of the Center on Philanthropy. The stakes are especially high with fund raisers, he says, because "fund raisers build relationships with volunteers and donors. Once they leave, you lose those relationships."

A recent survey by Staffing.org, a nonprofit group in Plymouth Meeting, Pa., that uses the Internet to collect and publish information to help groups improve recruiting practices, found that companies spend an average of $4,522 to hire a new employee. Depending on the type of company, costs ranged from an average of $2,181 for an educational group to $11,209 for a consulting company's hire.

Beyond the direct expenses related to hiring, consultants say that charities with fund-raising job vacancies lose money they probably could have brought in had a position been filled. Even after a new person is hired, they say, it usually takes six months or more for a fund raiser to get familiar with an organization and start building relationships with donors. In the time it takes to fill an open job and bring a new fund raiser up to speed, some potential donors probably decide to give their money elsewhere, consultants say.

"A lot of people don't think about those costs, but they overwhelm the cost of a head hunter" to look for a replacement fund raiser, says William J. Smith, a business consultant in Hudson, Ohio, who has conducted research on recruitment issues for nonprofit and business groups. "If you lose an employee in a revenue-generating position, you're taking a hit in the money coming in."

For instance, Mr. Smith says that if a fund raiser who brought in $2-million a year leaves and it takes four months to find a replacement, a third of the $2-million -- about $667,000 -- in future income is lost. If it then takes six months for the replacement person to get fully set up in the new job, the charity can expect to lose as much as $1.16-million, Mr. Smith says, because the new hire may bring in 30 to 50 percent less in gifts while he or she is learning the ropes.

Glen Kwok, executive director of the International Violin Competition of Indianapolis, says he has felt some of the indirect costs of fund-raiser turnover firsthand. After spending four months hiring a development director, he now must repeat his search less than a year later. He says that, while his charity has been able to raise enough money to pay for this fall's violin competition, it has not been able to ask donors to give money to commission a documentary of the event, a tool that Mr. Kwok believes could be very useful in raising money in the future. "Every week that you go without a development director is difficult," he says.

The Los Angeles Zoo lacked an executive director -- its lead fund raiser -- for two years, as the board went through two hires who didn't work out before finding the right person, says Mary Grigsby Urquhart, chairman of the board of the Greater Los Angeles Zoo Association. A year after finding that person, the zoo still is struggling to meet its goals.

"You play catch-up later," Mrs. Urquhart says. "A lot of donations don't come in a year. They take several years to cultivate. A seven-figure donation doesn't happen overnight."

Charity leaders offer many theories for why fund raisers tend to change jobs frequently.

Most people attribute turnover to the shortage of experienced fund raisers. Not only are new charities forming at a rapid clip, but many established groups are hiring a fund raiser for the first time or are expanding the type of solicitations they make, such as seeking planned or major gifts. In the past five years, 173,000 new U.S. charities have been given tax-exempt status by the Internal Revenue Service, bringing the total to more than 850,000.

With competition for fund raisers fierce, salaries for top fund-raising jobs have tended to rise. But promises of greater pay and benefits are by no means the only incentives to job hop.

Some fund raisers say they have left jobs when a new chief executive has come in with different values or management styles from their own. Others move to new organizations as a way to attain more responsibility and a more-prestigious job title.

The rise in salaries, driven by a desire to recruit and keep fund raisers, has sometimes had unintended consequences, fund raisers and consultants say, by prompting board members and chief executives to place unrealistic expectations on their development directors.

"Boards still don't get it," says Gary Kaplan, a fund-raising consultant who has served on nonprofit boards since 1982. "There's an expectation that the leader in fund raising is the one that's going to deliver the dollars, when their real function is to be a facilitator. Fund raisers are supposed to structure programs, train their boards, and use the boards' contacts to open doors."

Fund raisers who complain about low job satisfaction say they often get treated as outcasts at organizations and are left out of discussions about programs and mission.

Says one fund raiser at a local chapter of a national organization who plans to leave the profession: "I have been referred to as an 'administrative cost' at board meetings." The fund raiser, who asked that her name not be used, says: "At a board orientation, my boss prefaced my introduction by saying it was too bad we had to ask for money. Apparently, while I view my job as a higher calling, others perceive me as some type of oily used-car salesman."

Shawn Bohen, executive director of the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations, at Harvard University, says charities should expect such complaints to grow if they do not make concerted efforts to make fund raisers feel that they are an integral part of an organization's mission. "To be the person that is only good at the schmoozing and the money -- for the younger generation, that is not enough," she says. "They are striving for meaning. They want to be connected to the program work, to [discussions of] how any resources will be used. Just focusing on annual giving in a vortex leaves people just feeling disenchanted."

The problem isn't just one of being able to recruit young people to the profession, but also of figuring out how to keep senior fund raisers. Many fund raisers say they find the stresses of the work too much to sustain over a long period of time.

Development officers tend to work longer hours as they gain experience, according to the Indiana University study. Fund raisers who reached the age of 60 reported working 60 hours a week, while the average work week for everyone in the survey was 48 hours. "You're spending all that time away from your family, traveling, going to dinners, going to meetings," says Indiana University's Mr. Tempel. "The joy of that doesn't last very long."

While no comprehensive efforts have been proposed to stem turnover among fund raisers, the incoming board chairman of the Association of Fundraising Professionals, Colette Murray, a fund-raising consultant in San Diego, says she plans to ask the association to conduct research on the topic.

Some charities have had success in improving retention rates by refining the questions they ask in the hiring process, revamping the way they manage fund raisers once they arrive, and changing the way they handle the situation when a fund raiser shows signs of growing restlessness. Some experienced fund raisers say they give strong preference to hiring people who have been in their previous jobs for at least three years.

"I look for people who stayed at an institution," says Linda B. Carter, executive director of the Community Foundation of Broward, in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. "Then I ask, where did they take the organization? If they started out in special events, did they nurture that into an individual giving society?"

Adds Ms. Carter, who spent 15 years as the top fund raiser at the Museum of Discovery and Science, in Fort Lauderdale, before coming to the community foundation: "I've seen some of the worst résumés in the world: two years here, two years there. I don't think you can really make a difference in that time."

Peter T. Wilderotter, vice president of development at WNYC, a public-radio station in New York, says he believes the key to retention is hiring someone who has a strong interest in a charity's mission, even if the person lacks fund-raising expertise. He hired four such people, and is in the process of hiring a fifth, a business executive who decided after the terrorist attacks that she wanted more meaningful work. After a year, his four hires appear to be working out, he says. All bring different skills to the work, but "they all were public-radio listeners and became very turned on by the mission," he says.

Other organizations have made changes to their management styles to retain talented fund raisers once they come on board.

Heather Hutchison, chief development officer at Advocate Health Care, in Oak Brook, Ill., says she was frustrated by spending time training entry-level development officers only to see them leave 18 months later. Now the entry-level employees on her fund-raising staff of 75 stay about twice as long, and Ms. Hutchison says that changing the office working environment has played a big role.

"Number one, we loosened up the organization so it is a lot more fun culture," she says. Each month a different team of employees plans the staff meeting, using lighthearted methods to achieve serious goals, such as playing a mock "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" game to teach their colleagues about planned-giving lingo. Staff members have also had "bring your pet to work" days, dress up for Halloween, and celebrate personal events together such as birthdays, weddings, and the births of children.

Ms. Hutchison also instituted a program of flexible hours, including allowing all employees in the summer to have the option of leaving by 1 p.m. every other Friday if they make up the lost hours at another time.

In the end, it is in Ms. Hutchison's interest to ensure that her fund raisers stick around, and not only because it means she spends less time recruiting and training them. At her annual performance review, the hospital system's chief executive reviews the results of quarterly surveys filled out by her employees rating their job satisfaction, and he holds Ms. Hutchison accountable for keeping turnover low.

Consultants say charities could avoid many job departures by asking their fund raisers what they like and dislike about their work and then trying to make adjustments when possible.

St. Michael's College, in Colchester, Vt., tried such a tactic recently after it had to fill nine vacancies in four years on its 10-person fund-raising staff. Travis N. Gray, director for advancement services, says fund raisers told the college that they were being asked to do too much. "Other institutions didn't have such aggressive goals," he says. So two months ago, St. Michael's relaxed its requirements. Fund raisers are now asked to visit 15 to 17 potential donors off-campus each month, instead of 20.

Orion Jones, a consultant in Hanover, Md., who was human-resources manager during a six-year capital campaign at the Johns Hopkins University, in Baltimore, says charities should consider temporary schedule adjustments if that is what's needed to keep a good fund raiser. For example, a new mother's job description might be changed so she can work in the office instead of traveling for a few years. "Maybe there's a way to use her institutional knowledge so someone else can go in the field," he says. "It's not rocket science, but it's amazing how many institutions don't do it. I would take advantage of those situations elsewhere and hire their people away."

If a fund raiser decides to move to another job, consultants say charities should always ask why. If the answer is to get more money, they say charities may save money in the long run by matching a person's salary offer if the fund raiser is good rather than having to go through a job search. "Make sure no one ever leaves you for money," says Richard Page Allen, a fund-raising consultant in Williamsport, Pa. "The next person's only going to cost you more."