Finding the Right Fund Raiser

Tight job market compels charities to sharpen their search techniques

As the demand for senior fund raisers increases beyond the pool of qualified candidates, charities are finding it harder and harder to fill open slots. As a result, many are turning to professional recruiters.

But even those charities that conduct their own searches can enhance their success rates by borrowing techniques used by headhunters, experts say. And when charities do choose to hire an executive recruiter, there is much that they can do to ensure that they get the best value for their money.

The most important thing that a charity conducting its own search can do is to ask tough questions, most recruiters agree.

“When I interview a development professional, I often feel like I’m cast in a pen with a greased pig,” says Gary Kaplan, president of Gary Kaplan & Associates, a recruiting company in Pasadena, Calif. “I can’t get my arms around what they’ve done. They have the ability to talk about gifts using the collective ‘we,’ but when you ask them what their significant accomplishments are, it’s hard to pin them down.”

Simply knowing that a job candidate was involved in the solicitation for a big gift isn’t good enough, says Mr. Kaplan. The charity needs to know what the relationship was between the candidate and the donor, what the solicitation process was like, and what problems cropped up.

“Don’t ask, ‘What’s the largest gift you’ve ever closed?’” says Richard Page Allen, president of RPA Inc., a Williamsport, Pa., search company that helps charities fill fund-raising jobs. For some charities, he notes, bringing in a $60,000 gift is just as hard as landing a $1-million gift is at another institution. Instead, he advises, “talk to them about the experience.”

Michael Margitich, deputy director for development at the Museum of Modern Art, in New York, suggests that charities directly pose to prospective fund raisers the question: “Do you like asking for money?”

“I know that sounds so simple,” he says, “but there is a whole part of the development operation that is really administrative.” Charities need to be sure that job candidates can do more than the paperwork, and that they are skilled negotiators who are comfortable meeting with prospective donors, he says.

Despite the importance of personal interviews, many charities rely too heavily on them when they should be spending more of their time checking out prospective fund raisers’ references, experts say.

“Referencing should be 80 to 90 percent of the decision,” says John Kuhnle, a recruiter at Korn/Ferry International, in Washington. “Personal interviews often can be a trap for people. They get seduced by a performance, but the person may not be right for the job.”

Mr. Kuhnle and other experts say charities should ask references provided by the candidate more than just whether the candidate is a nice person, or what his or her strengths and weaknesses are. They suggest that charity executives ask more general and open-ended questions, such as, “Who are some of the most effective fund raisers you know, and where does this person fit into that pecking order?”

Nancy Nichols, who sometimes places senior fund raisers as a recruiter for Heidrick & Struggles, which is based in Chicago, says she contacts the people given as references by the candidate, then asks each of them for other people who know the candidate well. She normally checks 10 to 15 references per candidate, promising confidentiality in order to get candid answers.

The goal, she says, is to get references from a variety of people both inside and outside the organization — supervisors, staff members who report directly to the candidate, and the candidate’s peers.

“The most important thing in referencing is that you go up, down, and sideways,” says Ms. Nichols. “Some people are just charming with the board and hell on wheels” with staff members, she says.

Getting references from people not originally provided by the candidate should be done above board, experts say. “All of this has to be done with the permission of the candidate,” Mr. Kuhnle says.

Besides asking tough questions and checking references thoroughly, professional recruiters and charities that have worked with them offer the following tips on hiring fund raisers:

Limit involvement of search committees. Even charities that work with professional recruiters to find senior fund raisers often form search committees made up of board members and other volunteers who are not necessarily experts in the field of fund raising. Such committees can slow down the decision-making process, leading candidates to lose interest and accept other offers, says Steven Ast of Ast/Bryant, an executive-search firm in Stamford, Conn., that specializes in filling fund-raising positions.

“A search committee is a political animal,” he says. Some members are well-intentioned volunteers who should logically be on the committee, but others are naysayers who are put on the committee to placate them, because they have complained about previous hires.

“People become prima donnas,” he says, which “can cause all kinds of havoc.” In such cases, he notes, committee members are often unable to pick the top candidate — or even agree on who the top candidates are.

Judith I. Bailey, president of Northern Michigan University, in Marquette, has found a way to avoid such problems. During a recent search for an executive director of development, she assigned a vice president to work closely with the selection committee and the search company to keep things on a strict timetable.

Furthermore, she eliminated potential contention among committee members by making it clear from the start that their job was to screen candidates — and nothing more. Instead of arguing over which candidate was best, their goal, she told them, was to come up with an unranked list of the top contenders.

“It helps with the politics,” she says. “I sat with the committee and said, ‘Let’s talk through the candidates. What are Candidate A’s strengths and weaknesses? What about Candidate B’s?’”

She says a committee of 8 to 12 members is often a good size. “Then if calendars are such that someone can’t make a meeting, you still have a large enough number,” she says.

Promote your strengths. Three years ago, when Kent State University started looking for a senior-level fund raiser, it had never conducted a capital campaign, had only a tiny annual fund, and boasted few volunteers. But the university framed the position as a golden opportunity for a fund raiser to build a strong development program from the ground up. And it emphasized the institution’s strengths, including that it has one of the oldest honor colleges in the United States and a fashion-design program that ranks among the top 10 nationwide. Those were the factors that persuaded Bill Spiker to take the job.

Most charities, says Mark Lindemude, who hired Mr. Spiker, “don’t take the time to think about what it is about the institution that would make someone want to work there.”

Weigh costs carefully. In the tight job market, many charities are finding that the search for senior fund raisers takes up too much of their time, and that it might be advantageous for them to hire a professional recruiter.

“It’s expensive to take people away from their jobs to get new people in here,” says Peter Weiler, associate vice president for development and alumni relations at Pennsylvania State University, who has hired fund raisers both with and without the help of a search company.

Headhunters, says Mr. Weiler, are usually more skilled than staff members at weeding out candidates who don’t have exactly the right skills, are in the wrong salary range, or fail to meet other basic criteria. “They do a lot of triage,” he says.

Executive recruiters can also help to identify up-and-comers in the fund-raising field, says Susan Coulter, vice president for university advancement at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston. A few years ago, Ms. Coulter says, she would have hired only fully qualified fund raisers — never someone who needed training. But in recent years, with the market so tight, she says she has lowered her expectations.

“We need search consultants to identify people who are coming up through the ranks,” she says.

Some charities find it economical to work with a professional recruiter on just part of a search. For example, some recruiting companies will agree to interview only the top candidates identified by a charity, or just check candidates’ references.

One university, a client of Robert Sellery Associates, a Washington recruiter, did a search on its own for a development officer but ended up in the awkward position of having to choose among a former employee, two alumni, and three candidates suggested by trustees and other administrative officials. Mr. Sellery interviewed each of the final candidates and gave his appraisal to the university, charging an hourly fee.

Select recruiters carefully. Charities that decide to hire a professional recruiter should use the same care in choosing the company that they would use in choosing a fund raiser. Recruiters should be asked to provide different types of references, including other charities that have used the company for the same type of search, fund raisers whom the company has placed, and even some candidates who were contacted by the recruiter but not placed in a new job.

And they should check those references thoroughly. How the company deals with candidates speaks volumes about the potential for a successful search.

Mr. Margitich of the Museum of Modern Art says he chooses a search company in part by how much the recruiter already knows about his organization. “Attention to detail is No. 1,” he says. “Have they done their homework about us? Do they know when we were established, who the founders were?

“The pitch they would make to a museum is not the same as to a university. They need some knowledge of the place. You can tell that early on.”

Get frequent updates. Before engaging a company, charities should discuss how often recruiters will update them, says Ted Grossnickle, president of the fund-raising consulting firm Johnson, Grossnickle & Associates, in Franklin, Ind. And, he says, when checking a company’s references, charities should ask other charities about how often the company kept in touch.

Many charity executives want a search company to be in touch with them once a week, or every other week, once it has a list of candidates for a fund-raising job. They also want the company to be in frequent touch with the candidates — as often as every day or two once the search has been narrowed to the top contenders. How the company deals with candidates — how often it keeps in touch and how well it treats them — is a good measure of the likelihood of a successful search, experts say.

Check the contract. After a company is hired, a written contract should lay out a time line for the search and include certain provisions to protect the non-profit organization, experts say. For example, many search companies promise not to recruit the same fund raiser again for as long as he or she is employed at the organization — and they will not recruit anyone from the organization for at least two years.

That should be a standard part of the contract, says Mr. Ast, of the Ast/Bryant recruiting company. Once someone has conducted a search for a charity, he says, “you’ve been privy to internal workings and family secrets, so to use that to your advantage would be wrong.”