How a Fund-Raising Consultant Found Her Calling
March 18, 2004 | Read Time: 6 minutes
My career path to the world of nonprofit fund raising has been circuitous. I graduated from the University of Nevada at Reno in 1981 with a bachelor of science degree in home
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economics. (Yes, there really was such a thing.) After college, I went to work as a manager for Mervyn’s department stores. After a few years, I left to help my then-husband run his commercial and residential maintenance business, then took a job as an office manager for a laser company, then worked for a high-end kitchen- and bath-remodeling company. At that point, I was 30 years old and, to be honest, not sure what I wanted to do with my life.
One day, my brother, who was living in El Paso, asked me if I would consider moving from Southern California to be closer to him.
He was in a relationship with a young woman who was dying of cancer, and I was going through a divorce, so we both needed the support. While I wasn’t sure what I was going to do career-wise, I truly believe that life leads you where you are meant to be. So I went.
I applied for some retail jobs, but ended up taking a $12,000-a-year position as an administrative assistant in the development and alumni-affairs office at the University of Texas at El Paso.
I had interviewed with Tom Chism, director of special services, and we clicked immediately. Tom coordinated commencement ceremonies and all university activities for retired faculty members, spouses of deceased faculty, and “Golden Grads,” who had graduated 50 years ago or more.
He also started a planned-giving program. I worked with him in all of these activities. It started out as “just a job,” but after a month, I just knew that this was what I was going to do for the rest of my life. I’d finally found my niche.
Everyone in the development office took me under their wings and mentored me, which helped give me a solid foundation of fund-raising knowledge as well as a great sense of confidence.
They gave me many responsibilities that were far beyond my job title. I was taught all aspects of fund raising — direct mail, grant-proposal writing, prospect research.
Everyone’s door was open to me and what they couldn’t give me in salary they gave me in training and in career-building opportunities. For example, the development office paid for me to attend a Council for Advancement and Support of Education conference in New Mexico, where I got to network with colleagues from across the country and get a broad perspective on the industry.
They also sent me to a planned-giving conference in Dallas. This was high-level professional training that they were essentially giving to an administrative assistant. But they saw potential in me and invested in my career, which ultimately made me want to do an even better job for them.
My personality really meshed with what a job in fund raising requires. For instance, to do it well, you need to have good communication skills and be able to work with a very diverse group of people, from the elderly to students. You also have to be good at juggling many different things at once in a fast-paced environment. That completely describes who I am.
But what most excited me was that for the first time I felt like I was contributing to something important, that I was making a difference, and that I was working with people who felt the same way. It was something I’d never experienced in the corporate world. You fall into a job that you soon realize could become a profession with a future. You’re not in it to get rich, but you get paid a living wage to do work that is meaningful and important and that you enjoy doing.
An experience that taught me a lot about how to work with people was when the director of development at the university, Janice Cavin, invested in staff training based upon the Myers-Briggs personality-profile test.
Going through that process was one of those lightbulb moments. I realized that whenever you are dealing with people — whether it be donors or volunteers or your boss — you have to learn how to pinpoint their personality types and communicate with them in the style that works best for them. I have been building on that learning experience ever since.
For instance, in my consulting work now, I work with a domestic-violence-prevention organization called the Sojourner Center, in Phoenix.
I’ve worked with their volunteers for the last three years on their annual charity golf tournament. These volunteers bring a lot of passion and knowledge to the table, but their way of doing things is very different from what I’m used to. They are well organized, so what they need from me is to be the “go-to girl,” to take care of miscellaneous things that come up, as they come up. They prefer to e-mail me their needs, even though I’m used to using the phone. They also prefer to contact me with their directives, rather than have me seek them out.
After about two and a half years at the university, I realized that my opportunities for growth were limited.
I moved to Phoenix in 1993, thinking I might go to law school. I wanted to advance my fund-raising career in higher education, and I had worked with a lot of lawyers on planned giving, and they told me that getting a law degree was a great idea.
But I ended up taking a job as the development director of a youth-services organization called Florence Crittenton Services of Arizona.
Similar to my interview experience with Tom, I immediately clicked with the director, Linda Volhein. And again, I found someone who was willing to take a chance on me. Linda said: “We’re raising $100,000 doing nothing. Surely you could raise that or more doing something.” I ended up working there for seven years, and right before I left we launched a capital campaign that ultimately raised $7-million.
While at Crittenton, I also had the opportunity to pay forward the mentoring I had received at my first nonprofit job.
While working full time, one of my employees was also trying to obtain her degree in communications from a local university. I respected her efforts and supported her by letting her use the computers for her schoolwork and by being flexible with her schedule. She’d started as an administrative assistant, just as I had, and within a year I promoted her to a community-relations coordinator, where she was doing newsletters and coordinating volunteer groups, because I knew that those kinds of opportunities fit her career goals and would help her grow.
I left Crittenton in the summer of 2000.
I recently had gotten married and had a daughter, and I wanted to devote more time to my family. About two weeks after I gave my notice, Linda asked me to stay on as a consultant. So Crittenton became my first client as a solo act.
I enjoyed the lifestyle that working for myself provided, and the steady work from Crittenton gave me a platform to let others know that I was available.
In the end, it is always about making the client happy. My biggest joy is trying to anticipate what someone is going to need, and then to be able to have it for them before they even realize they need it.
