Analyzing Fundraisers’ Personalities Can Help Them Click With Donors

A local Planned Parenthood nearly doubled the size of its average gift last year by matching the personality types of its volunteer fundraisers and potential donors.

The Albany, N.Y., group gave a personality test to people asking for big gifts face to face and then tried to match them with donors who were like them. For example, it paired introverted fundraisers with quiet donors who tended to give based on facts rather than gut reactions. Not only did the process increase the average donation to $1,046 last year, up from $575 in 2012, but the effort was more efficient: The charity needed only half as many volunteer fundraisers to meet its goals; it relied on 83 people, compared with 124 in the previous campaign.

Driven by fundraising demands and a proliferation of personality measures designed to help people better understand themselves and others, a growing number of nonprofits are adapting personality tests for use in fundraising. While most groups use them for their volunteers, some also have staff members take the assessments.

By better matching fundraisers with potential donors based on personality characteristics, organizations can reap several benefits.

Chief among them: Board members and others who may have avoided fundraising or performed poorly are more likely to succeed when paired with the right donors. Discussions about personality measures and the traits they reveal also help dispel the myth that extroverted glad-handers are the only people who can successfully ask for money.

“Regardless of the personality type you are, you can help us connect with current and prospective donors in a meaningful way, and no style is better than any other,” says Laura Alpert, the Planned Parenthood affiliate’s chief fundraiser. “There’s room for everybody.”

What’s more, personality tests also help fundraisers think hard about how to pitch an idea and how their personalities might get in the way of a successful appeal.

“The largest number of fundraisers are extroverts,” says Marc Pitman, a consultant who promotes the idea of assessing personality traits in fundraising. “We hire that way. Our culture celebrates extroverts.”

But introverted donors can be overwhelmed by an extroverted fundraiser and, even worse, think they are meeting with a fast-talking con artist, he says.

The ‘Polished Proposer’

Personality measures come in many forms, but several have now been created for fundraisers.

Laura Fredricks, author of The Ask, for example, classifies fundraisers into five categories, such as the “polished proposer who looks like a million bucks but often doesn’t listen enough” and the “delicate dodger who engages in small talk and never quite gets to the ask.”

“Knowing and owning up to your personality traits and how you come across to people,” Ms. Fredricks says, “will help you be a better fundraiser.”

Ms. Alpert’s charity used a measure created by Andrea Kihlstedt, a fundraising consultant who summed up her ideas in Asking Styles: Harness Your Personal Fundraising Power.

Before writing the book, Ms. Kihlstedt studied the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and other personality measures. She devised a simple tool that classifies people into four categories based on whether they are introverted or extroverted and how they make decisions, either by relying on their instincts and moving quickly or by amassing and analyzing a lot of information.

Mr. Pitman also focuses on how donors make decisions. In his book, Ask Without Fear, he suggests that fundraisers should think about their donors in two ways: as people who want to know every aspect of how an organization works or who want just a broad overview and are less responsive to lots of details.

Fundraisers can pose a simple question to learn which type donors are, he says. Ask them what they do for a living, and if they talk primarily about tasks and duties, that means they probably prefer detailed information in a solicitation.

“They may not know about a lot of things, but what they know they know very well,” he says. Let such people “showcase their individualized knowledge.”

People who answer the question with a broader description of what they do, such as being a playwright or a plumber, are more likely to be motivated by pitches that offer a grand vision rather than minute details, Mr. Pitman says. And those donors are often more willing than detail-oriented personality types to make unrestricted gifts.

Another key to helping people get better at raising money is understanding how introverted donors, board members, and volunteers tend to view fundraising, Mr. Pitman says.

Introverts, he says, often mistakenly think they have to contort themselves into something they are not or learn a sales pitch to ask people for money. But in fact their listening skills give them advantages.

He says he recently advised a woman on a charity board who scored high on introversion that she could be just as good or better at fundraising than anyone else.

“She was excited to learn that her type is a better fundraiser,” he recalls. “She said, ‘You mean I can just talk to my friends and listen to them and ask them questions? That’s fundraising?’”

Thinking about personality types isn’t just about asking for money: It’s also important in acknowledging big gifts, says Mr. Pitman.

“Many quiet donors don’t want a big party or an award,” he says. “They would prefer tea with the president or a note.”

Contrasting Styles

Personality assessments can be especially helpful in deciding who visits a potential donor.

Brian Saber, an Orange, N.J., consultant who helped Ms. Kihlstedt design and refine her personality measure, says he thinks it’s smart to take two people from the organization—one introvert and one extrovert.

Mr. Saber, who describes himself as an introvert, is now helping to raise money in a multimillion-dollar campaign by the Northwestern University Settlement House in Chicago. He says his personality style complements the charity’s extroverted president during visits to donors.

Mr. Saber lets the more talkative president take the lead in opening up meetings with the donor while he carefully observes the surroundings and interjects questions to draw the person out.

While every solicitation is different, Mr. Saber says, he relies on the president to talk about the charity’s work, and he takes responsibility for asking for a specific amount of money and following up with donors.

“I have pretty good social skills, but it takes a lot of energy. It has always been difficult for me to meet people for the first time,” Mr. Saber says. “One thing I’m doing to compensate is to make a cheat sheet of questions we could ask. Having the questions in front of me helps me feel more relaxed and ask better questions.”

To make sure their solicitations go smoothly, Mr. Saber says he also worked out a signal he uses with the president.

“He runs long and cannot help it,” says Mr. Saber. “I literally kick him under the table. If we are not close enough for me to do that, I give another signal, it’s a nod he can interpret.”

Leaving Comfort Zone

Some fundraisers, like Amanda Swan, newly hired by Girl Scouts of the USA, say personality tests have helped them become more assertive with donors.

After the test revealed her natural tendency to be quiet and reserved with people, Ms. Swan was able to step out of her comfort zone and ask at least one donor to give earlier in the relationship than she normally would.

“I made an appointment with a donor and asked for $25,000, and he gave the gift,” she says. “This gave me a shot of confidence, whereas I may have been more tentative.”

Other fundraisers say that knowing more about themselves through a personality assessment helps them adjust their personalities to accommodate the donors’ without coming across as insincere or manipulative.

Sophie Penney, a self-proclaimed extrovert who’s director of development at Foxdale Village, a retirement home in State College, Pa., says a personality test helped her better understand her own traits and how to adjust her personality to donors’.

After the test, she recalls having “the best moment in my fundraising career” when she visited a man who wanted to make a gift demonstrating his commitment to his religious faith.

“He was extroverted and liked to talk about what he was passionate about and his philanthropy,” Ms. Penney says. “I spent 90 percent of the time listening to him and not being extroverted.” After writing the donor a thank-you note summarizing what she had learned about him in the meeting, she says, “he got in touch with me. He said ‘You get me.’ I tempered myself, but I didn’t fake it.”

Traits in Hiring

Improving visits to donors is not the only way personality measures are applied in fundraising. Some charities use them to hire fundraisers. That helps ensure that charity officials don’t recruit others exactly like themselves, which can be problematic, says Ms. Kihlstedt, the fundraising consultant and author.

It may be more comfortable for fundraisers to work with people who have very similar personality styles, she says, but charities should strive for a healthy mix on both their boards and fundraising staffs.

That’s one reason Scott Koskoski, a senior development officer at the Morris Animal Foundation, which raises money for veterinary research, administers two personality tests to every fundraiser he hires.

“Donors aren’t equipped the same, so why would I hire people just like me?” says Mr. Koskoski. “That’s the last thing I need.”

After an initial phone interview with job candidates, Mr. Koskoski gives them 48 hours to respond to nine questions that he and his colleagues formulated to test fundraisers’ ability to invite donors to get involved in the charity’s work and their ability to issue a compelling challenge that will motivate other donors to give.

Mr. Koskoski says he applied those two traits to the hiring process after learning about them in business school as characteristics people use to persuade others to act.

Fundraisers need to be able to switch between them, he says, depending on what will motivate the donor. For that reason, Mr. Koskoski looks for fundraisers who are strong in both.

“I would much rather see these than a cover letter,” he says.

After he decides to hire a fundraiser, Mr. Koskoski then asks the person to complete Ms. Kihlstedt’s personality test.

That helps him match each fundraiser with a group of supporters who are likely to respond well to that person. He also sends a memo to other development officers to tell them about the personality traits of their new colleague.

“If we can get through the first six months by pairing you with those you resonate with,” Mr. Koskoski says, “we have a better chance of you staying with the organization and doing your job well.”