Creative Recruiting Can Help Charities Attract Fund Raisers, Experts Say

Les Garner initially turned down the presidency of North Carolina Wesleyan College.

ALSO SEE:

Wanted: Big-Gift Fund Raisers

Charities Offer New Incentives to Find and Keep Fund Raisers

One big concern, he recalls, was the fund-raising demands he would face.

Then he got the videotape.

Created by a board member who happened to own a video camera, the 20-minute tape contained messages from several prominent board members and volunteers in the college’s hometown of Rocky Mount. All of them addressed Mr. Garner by speaking directly into the camera. The city’s mayor, two bank presidents, and various other business leaders pledged to support the college and promised to do everything they could to help Mr. Garner succeed in the job.

That was all Mr. Garner needed to hear to put aside his qualms. “To see the volunteer leadership right there and have it pledged on tape in your living room with them looking right at you; well, it’s powerful stuff,” he recalls.

In today’s job market, experienced fund raisers like Mr. Garner are in short supply, and they can often pick and choose among job offers. While North Carolina Wesleyan came up with a creative way to recruit Mr. Garner, too few non-profit groups do enough to make senior fund-raising jobs — and the organization itself — desirable, executive recruiters say.

Charities don’t necessarily have to offer exorbitant salaries to improve their chances of finding a qualified fund raiser, experts say. To enhance their recruiting efforts without spending a lot of money, they say non-profit groups should:

Promote their institutions. Because seasoned fund raisers often have organizations vying to hire them, non-profit groups need to “sell” their institutions to job candidates by touting advantages such as a committed group of wealthy donors, recruiters say.

But instead, many charities take the view that a fund raiser would be lucky to work for them and seldom think about how to make their organizations appealing to applicants, recruiting experts say.

“Search committees often just evaluate job candidates, but all the evaluation in the world doesn’t mean anything if the candidate doesn’t want the job,” says Richard Page Allen, president of RPA Inc., an executive-search firm in Williamsport, Pa., that helps fill fund-raising positions.

The first goal in recruiting a qualified candidate, says Mr. Allen, “is to get everyone to want the job. We want to evaluate them too, but that’s not the first step.”

In addition to touting loyal donors, dedicated board members, and other aspects of the organization to make fund raisers feel at home, some charities promote their region as an attractive place to live. In some cases, they give applicants materials from the local chamber of commerce, tourism bureau, or other sources.

The Alzheimer’s Association, in Chicago, has given fund-raising job candidates a book about the metropolitan area published by a local newspaper. It describes the city’s neighborhoods in detail and rates them according to quality of housing, schools, and many other characteristics.

“It helps give people a flavor for the city of Chicago over and above what our own organization might say,” says Margaret Kirk, the association’s vice-president for development.

“With the competition in the market now,” she adds, “we have been aware of really needing to address quality-of-life issues for candidates who may end up moving here.”

Include spouses. Because uprooting one’s family can be a big deterrent to accepting a new job in another city, some recruiters advise extending an invitation to the fund raiser’s spouse when holding in-person interviews for senior development jobs. That demonstrates the organization’s recognition of the importance of the candidate’s family members and their role in any decision to move.

Pam Malumphy, an executive recruiter at Isaacson, Miller, in Boston, suggests that applicants and spouses be invited to dinner by the applicant’s would-be boss. Even better, she says, is when the boss also brings his or her spouse, since the two couples would interact a lot.

Keep job searches on schedule. Many search committees that are formed to fill senior fund-raising jobs don’t set or adhere to a timetable, recruiters say, even though deadlines for identifying qualified applicants, interviewing them, selecting finalists, and hiring the best candidate help minimize recruiting headaches.

Most recruiters can recall instances in which good candidates are left dangling for weeks or even months while search-committee members try to agree on matters such as when to hold a meeting to discuss the candidates’ qualifications. In some cases, candidates get tired of waiting and accept another job.

“Recruitment today for advancement is a lot like dating,” says Mr. Allen, the recruiter. “If you lose the momentum, people lose interest or get courted by somebody else.”

Don’t rely on advertising alone. Because many groups have seen a sharp decline in the number of qualified people who apply for top fund-raising jobs, recruiters advise non-profit organizations to contact desirable candidates, in addition to simply placing ads. Most headhunters make phone calls and send letters to numerous potential candidates, in addition to helping charities write and place ads in print and other mediums such as electronic discussion groups.

But charities can get good results by undertaking such efforts themselves. Goucher College, in Baltimore, did not use headhunters in its eight-month search to find two new major-gifts officers, both of whom started working at the college last fall.

Goucher advertised the jobs in publications, some of which are on line, and posted notices about the positions at several national and regional conferences for fund raisers. Officials also made extensive calls to colleagues at other institutions, as well as fund-raising consultants, to get tips about promising candidates. That effort yielded 12 finalists who were interviewed for the two positions.

Advertise multiple openings. Many charities find that the number of qualified candidates for senior fund-raising positions increases when they list more than one opening in an advertisement.

The Dana Farber Cancer Institute, in Boston, last year began to expand its fund-raising department and placed ads that listed 25 new openings, from administrative assistant to major-gifts officer.

While some of those jobs will take several months to a year to fill, officials say that listing all of the openings helped identify candidates who are now contenders for the 10 positions that are still open.

The ads have also helped promote the institution itself, says Elizabeth Roberts, director of development.

“It was a wonderful way of startling people into recognizing that we are going places, and we got some very good candidates that way,” says Ms. Roberts.

Include a contact name in want ads. Jotham Johnson, director of leadership gifts at Princeton University, says that he now puts his name and phone number in ads seeking seasoned fund raisers, instead of the more common practice of listing an address or a reference number that candidates use to send in resumes and cover letters.

While the calls Mr. Johnson receives take up a lot of his time, he says he will continue putting his phone number in ads because he gains valuable information that way. Mr. Johnson says the candidates who call are often taken by surprise when they realize that they are talking to their potential boss.

“It’s a chance to see how they handle themselves, how articulate, quick, confident, and poised they are in conversation,” he says. “It helps identify people who are really qualified, which is much harder to tell on paper.

“If they can carry a conversation with a stranger and convince me they are qualified,” he adds, “that is what they have to do with donors every day.”