Have Expertise, Will Travel

U.S. fund raisers abroad find hot job market, big challenges

Two and a half years ago Terry Alan Farris, a fund raiser at the University of

Hawaii´s health-sciences programs, was recruited to head the development efforts at Hong Kong Adventist Hospital.

Although he was daunted by the prospect of uprooting his family, including his wife, who was pregnant with twins, Mr. Farris ultimately decided that the opportunity to work abroad was too exciting to miss. He hasn’t had any regrets.

The mix of cultures in his adopted city intrigues Mr. Farris — and he quickly discovered that he had moved to a land full of fund-raising opportunities. The hospital is on track to raise $2.6-million this year, 10 times the amount raised the year he arrived.

Mr. Farris is part of a wave of Americans whose fund-raising expertise is being sought around the globe as non-profit organizations increasingly seek to raise private funds to bolster their activities and lessen their reliance on government funds. And as more and more countries are creating tax incentives to encourage giving to those organizations, demand for Americans who have experience showing donors tax-savvy ways to give is on the rise.

Although not every overseas fund-raising experience has been as successful as Mr. Farris’s, many Americans share his enthusiasm for other shores despite a variety of challenges involving uncooperative boards of trustees and unrealistic expectations of non-profit organizations.

Among the signs that charities abroad are increasingly looking for ways to garner expertise from the United States:

• American consulting companies are being asked to recruit candidates for fund-raising jobs overseas. For instance, Brakeley, John Price Jones, a Connecticut adviser to non-profit groups, is currently searching for Americans to become major-gifts fund raisers at universities in France, Germany, and Sweden. The successful candidates will be offered three-year contracts and told they have that much time to set up fund-raising offices and train Europeans to run them.
• American professional societies and fund-raising training programs are being asked to offer their services abroad. Indiana University’s Fund Raising School has started satellite programs in Argentina, Australia, Mexico, New Zealand and, just this month, Austria, and predicts more additions in the near future. These programs are run by local teachers trained by university staff members and are based on course materials developed by Indiana’s professors.

  Five years ago, the Council for Advancement and Support of Education opened a London bureau that now offers seminars on fund raising and other topics throughout Europe. The organization recently hired its first director of international programs and now provides information in French and Spanish on its Web site.

  And the National Society of Fund Raising Executives is now trying to decide whether it should set up more overseas chapters — and signal a more global approach by dropping the word “national” from its name. Already the society has chapters in Canada and Mexico. It says it has also received requests from groups that want to establish chapters in Brazil, Israel, the Netherlands, and elsewhere.

• U.S. groups such as the American Red Cross, The Nature Conservancy and CARE USA are sending fund raisers from the United States to help their overseas affiliates expand the amount they raise from local private sources. CARE USA, for example, recently created a new position — director of international resource development — to oversee its efforts to help overseas affiliates raise money in their own regions.

Charities overseas are looking to American experts in large part because the United States has a long-established tradition of raising money from private sources. However, tactics that work for U.S. fund raisers at home may not necessarily always translate abroad.

In Mexico, for instance, discussing death is generally considered taboo — so broaching the topic of bequests or other planned gifts that transfer money to a charity after a donor’s demise will “get you booted out of somebody’s home or office in two seconds,” says Daniel Q. Kelly, president of the Global Work-Ethic Fund, an organization that advises groups overseas on ways to improve their fund raising.

“We can’t sell a rubber stamp of what we are doing here,” says Loren Finnell, executive director and founder of the Resource Foundation, a non-profit group that advises Latin American organizations.

One of the hardest aspects for fund raisers of working overseas is dealing with different tax codes. While more countries have started offering tax breaks for donors, few of them grant benefits as significant as those available in the United States.

Among other challenges of working abroad is coping with charity boards.

Boards in Mexico “have been a status thing rather than a working thing,” says Roderick Reinhart, who spent two years teaching and consulting there. Although the same could be said of certain boards in the United States, Mr. Reinhart says he was struck by the lack of interest in fund raising by Mexican trustees. Mr. Reinhart encouraged his clients to work around the problem by setting up a fund-raising committee, independent of the board, that would realize its main purpose was to secure funds for their charities.

Lyndell Grey, an American professor who founded a charity in Bulgaria that advises emerging non-profit organizations about fund raising, among other things, says that the Bulgarian trustees she has encountered see board membership “strictly as a money-raising project for themselves, and then issues come up and it becomes very unpleasant.”

For instance, she recalls a situation where one of her Bulgarian board members who was in the computer business expected the charity to buy equipment from him. When the group chose another vendor, he resigned in a huff.

American fund raisers say another challenge is persuading donors overseas that charities need money for long-term needs, not just to deal with natural disasters or other crises. “Brits are great for rallying for people in trouble,” says Donald Kirkwood, who started the American School in London’s development program. “But making a habit of giving is not inculcated.”

Adding to the difficulty of fund raising in the United Kingdom and elsewhere: Money is not discussed openly and it is hard to request a specific amount. Such reticence makes it especially challenging for charities seeking big gifts.

“No one here ever discusses their salary or the cost of their house,” says Susan Whiddington, director of the Mousetrap Foundation, a London charity that combines theater and education by sending students to West End productions. “In America money is much more of a commodity,” says Ms. Whiddington, who was a fund raiser at New York’s Drama League before she moved to England 14 years ago.

The good reputation that American fund raisers enjoy overseas is a double-edged sword. They say some charities expect Americans to be able to produce a plentiful number of gifts in almost no time.

Joe Staley, president of the New York consulting firm Staley/Robeson, recalls one tense board meeting at which his Italian clients made a dramatic plea for the fund raisers to secure significant donations instantly.

“The perception is that fund raising is a very rapid process in America,” says Mr. Staley. “We have to educate people that it takes a great deal of time to put a plan in place and cultivate donors to make commitments to lead projects and ensure their success.”

Thomas Harris, a fund-raising consultant who has lived and worked in Europe for 22 years, concurs. “If I say we need 18 months of preparation I get blank stares back,” he says.

Even though American fund raisers are often bothered by the high expectations, they say that there are ways in which their outsider status allows them to accomplish goals they could not otherwise meet.

“I can say things to that no one else can say,” says John G. Lewis Jr., senior consultant at Marts & Lundy, a New Jersey company that has clients in Australia, Canada, and the United States. “If an Australian consultant said the same things they would’ve been run right out of the room.”

For instance, he says, he persuaded the University of Queensland to send a survey to 6,000 alumni with questions officials there initially considered too bold, such as “Have you ever made a major gift?” and “What do you consider a major gift to be?” About 1,700 people responded to the survey; most of them answered the personal questions about their incomes and ability to give — information that will be important as the institution starts seeking big gifts.

David Ray, an American official of CARE USA, says that when he helped the group’s Japanese affiliate raise money overseas, he found that he was often able to obtain interviews with donors that a Japanese person of the same age and stature wouldn’t be able to secure.

“I could get away with things that I couldn’t if I was a Japanese staff member of that same organization,” he says.

While many American fund raisers are happy to share their knowledge abroad, they say that in the long term, non-profit groups based in other countries will nurture their own development professionals who are familiar with the language, culture and traditions of local donors.

In fact, hiring a local fund raiser is often the first recommendation of American consultants who work abroad, not least so the organization will have someone to carry out their suggestions. Sometimes the non-profit groups balk.

“They look at it as an expense,” says Marts & Lundy’s Mr. Lewis. “I look at it as an investment.”

Some American organizations with affiliates overseas have found a way to overcome initial concerns about the costs of hiring fund-raising experts. They let the affiliates borrow an American staff member who shares techniques that have proved effective in fund raising and suggests new approaches.

CARE USA’s Mr. Ray returned to Atlanta last December after a year and half in Australia as the principal executive for marketing and communications. In addition to helping CARE Australia draft a long-range fund-raising strategy, he hired and trained three people to specialize in raising large gifts.

“It was hard to find staff who had that experience,” he says. “Part of my mission was to train the Australians in how to do this.”

At a time when the United States is facing a shortage of fund raisers and many senior development officials can command significant salaries, some experts question why Americans would want to work overseas and have to deal with the hassle of visas, language barriers, and often a cut in pay.

“It’s very rewarding to watch groups go from nothing to developing programs,” says Mr. Reinhart, who reluctantly returned to the states because he found it hard to make a living as a fund-raising consultant in Mexico. He is now director of development for Sharp Healthcare Foundation, in San Diego.

Mr. Kirkwood, who lived in London for two years, also had trouble making ends meet, but he says he wasn’t motivated by salary. “An American isn’t going to work overseas for the money,” he says. The person is going to go for “the love of the job and the culture.”

That pull helps explain why fund-raising recruiters say they are swamped with applications when they announce openings overseas.

But love doesn’t always conquer all, and the frustration of working in a country that is beginning to develop a formal system of philanthropy can cause burnout.

American fund raisers often are starting programs from scratch, which can be exhausting, and step one can involve educating key people in the organization about why resources should be spent on fund raising at all. Ms. Grey, after living primarily in Bulgaria for the last four years, plans to return home this fall, leaving the day-to-day operations of Foundation Bulgaria to the executive director. “Things do happen but it takes an enormous effort,” she says.

Coming home is not always so easy, however.

Thomas Harris liked living and working in Europe so much that he has stayed for two decades. He suspects that he has been gone from the United States so long that he wouldn’t be able to find a job if he returned.

“I would caution any American that when you leave the States you lose contact with your networks,” says Mr. Harris. What’s more, he says, he has been working on campaigns that seem ambitious in Europe — but that involve much smaller sums than the amounts Americans typically raise — and he’s not sure whether American employers would be impressed by that background.

Indeed, fund raising abroad clearly isn’t for everyone.

“Unless you are someone who thrives on change and is comfortable about being taken out of your realm of comfort,” Mr. Kirkwood advises, “don’t go.”