Exploring a New World

How charity managers learn to raise funds — and like it

After years spent in the trenches of environmental activism, Tim Carmichael was named in 1998 to head the Coalition for Clean Air. For the most part, he says, he loves his work at the Los Angeles nonprofit organization.

He presides over a six-person staff and a $500,000 budget. He gives talks to local businesses about pollution and lobbies state lawmakers in Sacramento to pass antismog legislation. He has created a network of environmental groups in the Los Angeles area that collaborate on projects. But he is frustrated by the rest of his responsibilities. “I tell people I have a dream job,” he says, “except for the fund raising.”

Mr. Carmichael understands why nonprofit groups like his need their leaders to be involved in soliciting donations. But sometimes, he says, fund raising prevents him from more directly promoting his organization’s mission. “We’re about reducing air pollution,” he says. “I’m a good advocate, and spending all my time raising money limits my ability to do press conferences, speak to businesses, or lobby.”

Despite Mr. Carmichael’s distaste for raising money, he has managed to double the group’s budget during his four-year tenure.

Many nonprofit workers, like Mr. Carmichael, entered the field because of their commitment to a mission: promoting clean air, helping the homeless, educating children. But as they grow from workers into managers, they are increasingly called upon to help — or even drive — their groups’ fund-raising efforts. Like Mr. Carmichael, many executives say that they recognize the vital role that their fund raising plays for their organizations — but they don’t relish it. Some, however, say they have grown comfortable with soliciting donations, and even view it as an extension of their groups’ missions.

Learning how to raise money isn’t just a way of ensuring an organization’s financial health, say some charity leaders — it can also be a way to improve a nonprofit employee’s chances for career success. Especially today, when the economy is shaky, program directors become more valuable to their organizations, and in the nonprofit job market, if they learn to raise funds, says Seth Moskowitz, executive director of American Associates of Ben-Gurion University, in New York, a group that raises money for the Israeli university. It’s simply supply and demand, he says: Fund raising is prized by charities because relatively few people are qualified to do it, compared with the number of openings. “There’s no shortage of program people,” he says. “If you want to make a competitive salary, you have to have fund-raising experience in your portfolio.”

Learning the Ropes

Charity workers acquire fund-raising skills in several ways. Some learn the basics of soliciting donations over a long period of time by taking classes, or by helping out with fund-raising tasks while still doing program-related jobs. Others receive informal training from consultants, supervisors, and board members. And still others learn on the fly.

Sometimes, nonprofit supervisors bring program workers along to fund-raising events to acquaint them with soliciting donors, and to give donors a chance to learn more about the programs their money supports. This is how Carol Koransky, who serves as senior vice president for policy planning and community development at the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles, says she learned fund-raising skills early in her 16-year career at the federation.

Though she works primarily in the federation’s department that determines how best to support Jewish charities in Los Angeles and programs in Israel, Ms. Koransky must spend a portion of her time soliciting donors. She keeps track of up to 20 wealthy people and foundations, including one foundation that typically contributes $200,000 a year. Without the early training, she says, she would not be as comfortable managing that responsibility. Today, she brings younger staff members with her on her fund-raising calls to pass on her knowledge.

Some leaders, however, do not learn fund raising gradually. Instead, they get thrown into a group that needs money, and they either sink or swim. Carey Perloff, artistic director of the American Conservatory Theater, recalls that in 1986, on her first day of work as head of the Classic Stage Company, a small theater in New York, she arrived to find that the Internal Revenue Service had put a lien on the theater for its failure to pay three years’ worth of payroll taxes. She had to learn quickly how to ask for money, she says, or the theater would have closed and her first nonprofit leadership job would have ended before it truly started.

She met with anybody in the New York theater world who would take her calls, she says. Her biggest helper, she says, turned out to be a legendary figure: Joseph Papp, the late producer and director who ran the New York Shakespeare Festival and the Public Theater. Mr. Papp coached her, lent her money, and introduced her to his supporters. She remembers that he told her the science of fund raising all boils down to “getting in people’s faces.” “If you hate rejection,” he advised, “this field is not for you.” She followed his direction and ultimately, the theater prevailed.

When Ms. Perloff arrived in San Francisco in 1992 to take her current job, the American Conservatory Theater had just begun a $27.5-million capital campaign to repair damage the theater suffered from the 1989 earthquake. Again, she was thrust into an intense fund-raising campaign, this time in an unfamiliar city. But she got through it, she says, mostly by enlisting the help of the theater’s board in searching for prospective donors. Four years later the campaign ended, having surpassed its goal by raising $29-million.

Fund raising still requires a great deal of her attention, Ms. Perloff says, but she finds ways to think about it that make it nearly as enjoyable as her key interest, directing plays. “It’s a way to talk to people about something I love,” she says. “I try to communicate why I’m so passionate about it and why it matters so much to the Bay Area. I try not to think, ‘Oh, now I have to go and beg for money.’”

Career Opportunities

Many program officials say they learned to raise money when they realized they wouldn’t advance unless they became good at soliciting funds. Acquiring fund-raising skills helped Matt Aubry move away from program work and climb the career ladder at his organization, YAI/National Institute for People with Disabilities, in New York. Mr. Aubry spent 10 years first as a counselor and then as a manager in one of the organization’s group homes for retarded adults. During those years, he says, he did not think much about fund raising.

“When you’re working in programs,” he says, “nobody wants to identify themselves as a fund raiser.” Program workers, he says, tend to undervalue the role of fund raising in supporting their work and often think of fund raising as a mercenary job that has little to do with a group’s mission.

After running the group home for a decade, Mr. Aubry decided that he wanted to advance at his organization. He joined an internal management-fellowship program that gave him the opportunity to rotate through different jobs at the charity, and discovered that he enjoyed fund raising. When the group’s director of development left in March, he agreed to work in the department permanently as an assistant coordinator — although, he says, he’s been functioning as the group’s chief fund raiser while it looks to fill that position.

Once on the job, though, he realized that he needed more technical knowledge of his new field. He gave himself a crash course, first attending a seven-session fund-raising seminar at New York University, then joining the Association of Fundraising Professionals and attending a daylong conference. So far, he says, he is on track to maintain the charity’s annual fund-raising goal of between $3-million and $4-million, despite the New York economy’s recent struggles.

Immersing himself in fund raising, he says, has transformed his thinking about it and its relationship to program management. “Because of early training, at first it was hard to accept that role, hard to put on another hat,” he recalls. “But then I realized it wasn’t another hat, that there are a lot of similarities between program work and fund raising because both involve fostering and cultivating relationships.” To bring this lesson home to everyone in the organization, Mr. Aubry has expanded a program that rewards counselors and managers who make an extra effort to raise money through local events like bowlathons, raffles, and yard sales.

Strengths and Weaknesses

Some program workers who are thrust into a fund-raising role find that their passion for and knowledge of their organization’s mission is a vital asset. In fact, Joseph Sterrett, athletics director at Lehigh University, in Bethlehem, Pa., relies exclusively on his passion for Lehigh’s sports teams when raising money, and does not worry very much about the mechanics of giving.

A Lehigh alumnus who was once the starting quarterback for its football team, Mr. Sterrett has spent 26 years working at the university. While in his first position with the university, as an assistant football coach, he began raising money for the annual fund by participating in Lehigh’s yearly volunteer day, and speaking at events honoring donors. Now that he spends about one-quarter of his time raising money, he says, he’s discovered that his longevity at one institution has proven valuable.

“As I have spent more time here, I start to know a lot of people who reach the age where they can make more significant gifts,” he says. “As other offices turn over on campus — there have been three or four directors of development in the last 15 years — I have gotten to know many of the major-donor prospects.”

His devotion to the school and its athletics programs are perceived as genuine by donors, he says. Talking about the projects, he says, comes naturally to him because of his affection for Lehigh. In a campaign that ended in December, he helped raise $4.5-million for a new gym. Before that, he worked on a $2.5-million campaign that ended in September, which will pay for an addition to the varsity locker-room building.

Though he has learned a bit about the difference between an annual fund and a capital campaign, and other development fundamentals, he tries to stay away from the field’s jargon.

“I don’t get hung up on fund-raising ABC’s,” he says. “Credibility comes from being around Lehigh and from not being a salesman per se. I’m not viewed as a fund raiser.”

Credibility is one advantage a charity’s leaders — especially those who come from program work — can bring to fund raising, says Neil L. Rudenstine, a former president of Harvard University who was instrumental in helping the institution raise $2.6-billion in a capital campaign that ran from 1993 to 1998. “People who give substantial resources want to have some sense of who’s in charge and what kind of conviction lies behind the project,” he says.

Mr. Rudenstine, a former poetry professor, systematically taught himself how to approach donors, and relied on a 300-person development staff to coordinate activities across the university. He was able to keep engaged and upbeat during the campaign by adhering to a three-part approach to fund raising: “First, try to make the campaign as well thought out, substantive, and genuinely persuasive as possible. Next, stick to it and explicate it to donors. Finally, try to make it as personal and human an experience as possible. Get to know people and talk to them about the university,” he says. “The social aspect of it,” he adds, “often produces the greatest personal satisfaction.”

Perseverance Pays Off

Even charity leaders who haven’t learned to love fund raising can learn to persevere. Mr. Carmichael, of the Coalition for Clean Air, says he hasn’t let up in his quest for gifts — and that he recently received a harsh reminder of why fund raising is so important when a confluence of events conspired to derail his budget.

“We had a significant dip in cash flow because I went zero for four this summer,” he says. First, two expected foundation grants failed to materialize. Then, a state contract was scaled back. Finally, fearing that a year-end fund-raising gala would end up in the red, Mr. Carmichael took pre-emptive action and laid off one full-time junior policy analyst and decreased another’s hours. “It was gut-wrenching,” he recalls.

Mr. Carmichael, with the help of his board, responded by fund raising with renewed vigor. He drummed up attendance at the benefit to 200 people by publicizing it more aggressively, and his board helped him seek out new sponsors. The event brought in $40,000.

He also scouted around for more foundation support, and found a $20,000 emergency grant — which, he says, was won based on a recommendation from one of his group’s current supporters. “That month was the hardest experience of my executive directorship,” he says. For the moment, the danger has passed. Now, he says, he can hire back the policy analyst he had let go.

The experience, he says, made the link between raising money and performing charity work palpable: “I believe in the team that I’ve assembled, and I need to support them.”

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