Lessons Learned Early Continue to Guide a Veteran Fund Raiser

I was fired from my first job. I was at the Metropolitan Opera, in the major-gifts department. I was the low woman on the totem pole. I was in the hallway, in the conference room, in a cubiclen — wherever they could put me.

I wanted to be around music. My grandmother, whom I’m named for, was a piano teacher. So I grew up around music.

Margaret Williams Age: 50 First nonprofit job: Development assistant, Metropolitan Opera, New York Current job: Executive director, the Food Project, Boston

I played viola and aspired to be an opera singer.

My goal after graduating from Mount Holyoke College in 1981 was to be the general manager of a classical-music organization. My mentor, a general manager himself, said to go into fund raising, it’s the straightest path.

At the time, the Met was touring to five cities around the country. My job was to mail everything to everyone in those five cities. It was tedious work. You can only stuff so many annual reports, or sign so many letters in someone else’s name. It got to me, and I made a mistake.

The chairman of the board was giving a speech. He was reading it from these index cards. I didn’t number the cards, and they got mixed up. He had to shuffle through them.

You don’t do that in development.

My boss, Marilyn Shapiro, pulled me into her office. She knew I was unhappy. She knew I had learned what I could there. So she told me it was time to find something else.

It’s the best thing that ever happened to me. I was so young and green I didn’t know it was time to go. I needed an adult to tell me it was time to take that next step. I ended up at the South Street Seaport Museum. And I climbed from there.

I was at the Met for a year and a half. But some of the lessons I learned there I still put into practice at the Food Project, a group that works to create social change through sustainable agriculture. The first is to know your donors. A lot of people lead with the organization; I lead with the donor. I ask them, ‘Why are you here? Why do you care?’ That really opens up the conversation. It helps you understand the donor’s connection with the cause.

I learned recently that a major donor to the Food Project cares about hunger issues because she spent time in her 20s on an Indian reservation. She noticed that the older members of the tribe seemed to rest all day during the last week of every month. When she asked why, she learned that the food stamp money had run out. They were saving their energy so the children could have food.

At the very least, you ask the donor why they give. The personal connection is always much more compelling. And once you’ve made it, you know they’re in for the long haul.

I try to take that time with everyone. Not just the donors. Fund raising can create false hierarchies. And people resent that, eventually.

Every day when I went into the Met there were security guards. And every day, when I went in, I said hello and asked how they were doing. The ushers, the custodians, they were all part of it, and I treated them like people. And they remembered me, and paid me back in time.

I treated the doormen like donors. And for two years after I was fired, I heard world-class opera. They let me in.

People who are in the development business do this. Most of them don’t even think about it. Because in development, if you don’t love people, you’re in the wrong business.

The key is in the details. Fund raising is a detailed business. It takes time, patience, and, even in this age of automation, a sense of care for all things. My experience at the Met, where they manage thousands of major donors with that personal touch, really taught me that lesson.

In a way, it’s harder at a small organization. You don’t have that infrastructure to feed you the information you need to know about the person you’re about to meet with. But we have another advantage. Here, everyone who comes in is family.

We have about 35 employees, and a budget of a little under $4-million. I try to set an example for the rest of the staff. But I also listen to them. Almost every decision can be made with a group of people. That’s a way of opening up the decision-making process. And that’s good — you want to bring new ideas in. And, at the same time, you’re paying respect to the people in your organization.

What goes around comes around. That’s my attitude in the office, and in life.

It helps to follow what you love. I realized early on that I thrived in smaller organizations where social equality was the core of the work.

Along the way, I made some career-building choices, like getting an M.B.A. and working for a start-up for 10 months. But I realized that the best move was to follow my heart.

I made a decision midcareer to take some time off, in 2001 and 2002, to care for my ailing parents. My mother had brain cancer. She had less than a year to live. And I knew that my life’s work was to be there.

It took me a while to get my footing after that. But caring for my parents was the best job I ever had. And I learned something from it: The career path winds, but the essence does not.