Charities Seek Charisma and Specific Results When Choosing Fundraisers

Fundraisers spend lots of time socializing with donors after hours, often over drinks. That’s why candidates for such jobs are frequently interviewed over dinner.

Donna Frithsen, a veteran fundraiser at Drexel University’s College of Medicine, recalls working at another institution and interviewing over a fancy dinner a woman who had applied for a job arranging big gifts.

“This candidate ordered her second martini with four olives before the second course and had wine with dinner,” Ms. Frithsen says.

Near the end of the meal, Ms. Frithsen says, she asked the woman why she was willing to relocate from another city; after all, the new job would be a lateral career move rather than a promotion.

“I guess the martinis had kicked in,” Ms. Frithsen says. “She looked at me and said her town was ‘too small for me and my two ex-husbands, and the pickings there are slim.’ She was not in a job search, she was in a husband search. She failed the test with flying colors.”

With fundraisers who can raise large gifts in such high demand, Ms. Frithsen says, salaries have gone up and as a result institutions are spending more time—sometimes two days filled with interviews or more—trying to make sure a job candidate will be a good fit with donors and the executives he or she must interact with inside the organization.

“Thoroughness is not unusual because you’re making a big investment,” she says.

Get the Details Down

Candidates who make it to the interview stage must be prepared to provide detailed answers to questions about their fundraising track records.

Yet many fundraisers cannot supply that information in job interviews, says Jeff Comfort, the new vice president of principal gifts at Oregon State University, in Corvallis, who spent 18 years in a similar position at Georgetown University.

“I like to ask planned giving officers, ‘How many face-to-face visits with donors did you make in the last year?’ More than half can’t say,” Mr. Comfort says. “I get the same result when I ask about the number of gifts they closed or the number of proposals they sent out. This is surprising to me.”

When candidates are flustered by questions about how much money they raised at a previous job, they sometimes make vague references about teamwork, notes Steven Ast, a recruiter who places senior fundraisers.

“The best way for a candidate to answer is to say, ‘This gift wouldn’t have happened without my involvement and I can prove that,’” says Mr. Ast.

He encourages candidates to have specific details ready, not just about money raised but about four or five processes that led to a specific gift.

Nonetheless, fundraisers shouldn’t shy away from talking about problems or challenges faced in the past, suggests John Salveson, another executive recruiter, in Radnor, Pa.

“Talk in detail about how you overcame those problems,” he says. “You’ll end up making a much more convincing case to an employer than if you just say, ‘I did this great thing.’”

Understand the Charity

Other seasoned fundraisers who hire others say they rely on certain favorite questions to help them weed out people who don’t have what it takes to be good at attracting bequests or other large gifts.

At the New Jersey Performing Arts Center, in Newark, Peter Hansen, vice president of development, asks job seekers to tell him what they know about his organization. He says that he recently interviewed at least 15 people for a senior fundraising job, and two-thirds of the candidates were unable to provide what he regarded as a satisfactory answer when they were asked to talk about the arts center.

“People are not taking the time to do research,” he says. “If they won’t do it for where they want to work, they won’t do it for a donor.”

Scott Nichols, senior vice president for development at Boston University, says he has a question he always asks at the end of job interviews: “‘What do you do for fun?’ That question has helped me more than any other. I am always amazed at what people say, not realizing it is a serious question.”

Mr. Nichols says that one man applying for a senior fundraising position said that, in his spare time, he liked to volunteer at a charity for people with severe head injuries.

“He said he did it because he’d had head trauma and then he told me he really couldn’t read” as a result, Mr. Nichols recalls. The candidate, he adds, did not get the job.

Fundraisers shouldn’t just expect to answer questions from potential employers but to ask their own—the more intelligent the better, says Ronald Schiller, senior vice president of Lois L. Lindauer Searches.

Fundraisers need to demonstrate their comfort and familiarity with specialized knowledge, he notes. “I’m not saying being a know-it-all. In fact, candidates should talk about what they do to make up for what they don’t know,” says Mr. Schiller.

Other experts suggest that candidates think carefully about the kinds of questions they plan to ask—and what those questions suggest about their work ethic.

Mr. Nichols says that he often disqualifies job candidates for asking certain questions too early, before they are even offered a job.

Those questions, he says, show that a person is more interested in what the organization can do for him or her than whether this is the best job for the fundraiser’s skills. “Gay candidates sometimes open up right away and ask about same-sex health benefits,” he says. “Very often people ask, ‘Where would my office be?’ or ‘Do I get a corporate credit card?’ It’s like they have never been coached on interview skills.”

Sometimes it’s the way a candidate asks a legitimate question that can spell trouble, says Mr. Salveson. “If you ask a question like, ‘How motivated is the board of directors to raise money?’ you’re signaling that you think it’s the board’s job to raise money and that you’re just there to help them.”

Asking that question in a way that demonstrates an understanding of how boards can be helpful will get answers a candidate needs, and demonstrate an ability to work well with the board.

‘Impossible to Fake’

In a time when charities are going to greater lengths to establish whether a candidate is a good match for them, intangible qualities like charisma, confidence, and poise can help tip the scales in a fundraiser’s favor, say experts.

Recruiters and employers don’t always admit just how much charisma and likeability matter, acknowledges Debbie Merlino, president of the consulting firm DMW Direct Fundraising, in Plymouth, Mass.

“We tell candidates to showcase their skills so that they really shine in an interview, but I’ll always pick the person who has more charisma,” she says. “That’s a quality that’s almost impossible to fake.”

Paying attention to confidence and poise may seem shallow, but such characteristics, along with good judgment, are much more important in seeking big gifts than years of fundraising experience, Ms. Frithsen says.

“Hire the smartest person you can find, and teach them what they need to know,” she says. “That’s the best hiring advice I was ever given.”