When Ivelisse Fairchild was hired in late 2014 to head up development for the National Council of La Raza, the fundraising department was almost entirely vacant. It had lost several employees, including its deputy vice president as well as the staff members who handled large gifts and corporate relationships. The only person left in the department was an online-giving manager.
Ms. Fairchild moved quickly to turn things around. With the support of the organization’s leaders, she hired six people in her first six months, doubling the size of the original team. In February 2016, event-planning staff at the nonprofit, the nation’s largest advocacy group for Hispanics, were shifted into the development department too, bringing the size of her team to 21 staff members.
The expansion appears to be paying off: In 2015, the group brought in about $6.2 million, roughly double its goal. This year, the development office is ahead of where it was last year and is chasing a goal of $8.5 million. It’s more than half of the way there, Ms. Fairchild said.
In an interview with The Chronicle, Ms. Fairchild offered advice for other nonprofits on what it takes to build a fundraising department from scratch.
Find Leaders Who Care About Fundraising
You can’t create a fundraising team if you don’t have leaders who understand the importance of raising money. When Ms. Fairchild looked to hire staff, she received very little resistance, she said, because top-level managers believed that building up the department would pay off. Ms. Fairchild explained that the group’s leaders also wanted a team in place to launch a major fundraising campaign for the group’s upcoming 50th anniversary in 2018, and they understood that more staff would be needed. La Raza hopes to launch the campaign’s quiet phase this year. Unfortunately, Ms. Fairchild said, many organizations are not willing to invest in fundraising in the way that La Raza did.
Ease Tensions With Other Departments
A big challenge, Ms. Fairchild says, has been getting people in other offices to understand that her department is not seeking to take over their relationships with grant makers and others who give to the organization.
Fundraising at La Raza has traditionally been decentralized, she said, with various departments seeking grants or corporate support for specific programs. Ms. Fairchild’s department now assists these teams with their grant writing and other fundraising efforts. But that has caused some grumbles, as people in other departments may feel that their relationships are being hijacked.
Ms. Fairchild said she tries to frame her role as doing the “yucky work” — such as writing grants — and encourages the various departments to maintain their connections with grant makers and donors. She says her work allows them to focus on other things, like executing the programs they manage.
“Isn’t it so much better to have someone else worry about when your report is due, and coordinating that it’s done, and making sure that the next proposal is in?” she asks them.
Holding meetings each month with representatives from other departments has also helped ease tensions. In the meetings, her team makes sure it is on the same page with other staff members regarding who is soliciting whom, and what the next steps will be in the group’s fundraising efforts, Ms. Fairchild said.
Get Board Members Involved
The trustees have been key in helping the new fundraising team grow and develop its strategies. The board’s development committee meets with staff from the fundraising team every other month, and that’s been pivotal in holding the department accountable, Ms. Fairchild said. At one recent meeting, the resource development staff presented its plan for increasing individual giving, and committee members offered a critique, Ms. Fairchild said. “They say ‘this makes sense, this doesn’t make sense,’” Ms. Fairchild said.
Track Donors and Assess Them
Another key to building the team — and improving fundraising over all — was making sure that the nonprofit had a way to track its donors. Before Ms. Fairchild arrived, staff who obtained gifts were not required to enter information into a central database.
“People had Excel files; other people had Word files; some people had no files — so there was no consistency,” Ms. Fairchild said. “We put all of our donors, and many corporations and foundations as well, into one database. That’s really helped us a lot.”
Ms. Fairchild also assessed donors to see who could give more. The team identified 2,500 donors and sent their data to a private company to analyze their capacity for giving. The analysis revealed that many donors who had made small gifts had the ability to give larger amounts. In fact, the number of small donors who could give more exceeded the number of big donors who could give more.
“I was shocked,” Ms. Fairchild said, noting that the revelation set in motion a plan to target donors giving small gifts using e-news updates and other solicitations.
Hire Good People Who Will Last
Development offices need people who are creative, work hard, and, hopefully, will stay with the organization, she said. There is a lot of turnover among nonprofit fundraisers, and that can be disruptive.
“Be really careful about the staff that you hire,” Ms. Fairchild said. “Because these are people you want to stay over time.”
Once they are hired, employees need to have opportunities to grow. Ms. Fairchild gives her employees a chance to join webinars and workshops and encourages them to learn in the office about aspects of fundraising in which they are not directly involved. The nonprofit also pays fundraisers’ membership dues to the Association of Fundraising Professionals.
“I want people to feel…that they are going to grow,” Ms. Fairchild said. “Nobody wants to be in a position where they do the same job every single day and never have an opportunity to try new things.”