Fund Raisers Find For-Profit Jobs Give Them Best of Both Worlds

By DEBRA E. BLUM and DOMENICA MARCHETTI

When Gregory A. Schupra left his fund-raising job at a community foundation last year for a new job with a big bank,

his colleagues in the nonprofit world teased him that he was going “to the dark side.”

But, says Mr. Schupra, moving from the Community Foundation for Southeastern Michigan to Comerica Bank’s office in Ann Arbor, Mich., did not mean that he had to give up working in philanthropy.

“I feel like I have a dream job,” says the new vice president of the bank’s Charitable Services Group. “I have the ability to be compensated at a level commensurate with my level of skills and abilities, and at the same time I’m still doing good work for charities around the country.”

Mr. Schupra is part of a growing wave of nonprofit officials who have jumped from charity development offices to the financial-services industry.

As more and more banks, brokerages, mutual-fund companies, and other financial institutions create or expand services and products for the charitable market, the companies are plucking planned-giving talent from charities to run their new programs.

“If you want to serve the nonprofit market, it makes the most sense to hire people with primary experience in nonprofit management and fund raising,” says H. King McGlaughon, director of the Center for Philanthropy and Nonprofit Management at Merrill Lynch & Company and a former planned-giving officer for the Episcopal Church.

Brain Drain

It is unclear just how many charity officials have migrated to for-profit companies, or how many financial-services positions remain to be filled.

But some observers call the trend a brain drain that has serious implications for nonprofit organizations.

Jay Steenhuysen, director of philanthropic planning at Brown University, worries that as more and more employees leave the nonprofit world, fewer senior people will be available to teach their successors important lessons about fund raising, such as how to create lasting relationships with donors.

“Planned giving is not just about writing gift annuities,” he says. “There are people who are experienced in servicing donors, and those are the people who are getting snapped up. Who will be around to pass down more than just the technical aspects of planned giving?”

Even so, Mr. Steenhuysen is not entirely discouraged by the flow of charity fund raisers to the commercial world.

The trend, he says, could help some charities in their dealings with financial institutions because former fund raisers who work for those institutions would understand the issues that nonprofit groups face.

Mr. Steenhuysen himself is working as a part-time consultant for MyCFO, an online company that advises wealthy people on estate and charitable planning.

Richard Slutzky, vice president and senior philanthropic consultant at Merrill Lynch’s charitable-services center, calls the loss of experienced planned-giving officers “a stress point” for charities. But he, too, says that some good could come of the trend.

Three years ago, when he resigned as director of the Jewish Community Foundation of MetroWest, in Whippany, N.J., to join Merrill Lynch, his assistant took over the foundation.

“It gave my assistant director the ability to rise to that position, which motivated him to stay in the nonprofit world,” Mr. Slutzky says.

Competitive Pay

Despite such positive outcomes, however, many charities simply cannot afford to keep veteran fund raisers on board when better-paying opportunities beckon.

“The reality is that with the kind of background that’s necessary to be effective and successful in planned giving, these people can make considerably more dollars in the private sector, in a wide range of positions — consulting, law, banking, and other financial services,” says Gary Kaplan, president of Gary Kaplan & Associates, an executive-search company in Pasadena, Calif.

Mr. Kaplan says that while some charities have raised the salaries of their most-experienced fund raisers in response to the competition from the for-profit world, others have not.

“Some still want me to fill the job with a $60,000 to $80,000 salary offer, and we simply won’t take those requests,” he says. “You’d be hard-pressed to find much talent below a six-figure number.”

Mr. Schupra acknowledges that a big part of his decision to take the job at Comerica was the compensation package.

Not only does he make a larger salary at the bank than he did at the community foundation, but, he says, he has the potential to earn even more money through stock options and performance bonuses.

“There’s a lot more opportunity for additional benefits that the nonprofit arena just doesn’t have to offer,” Mr. Schupra says.

But working in the charity world may offer other, less-tangible benefits. Some planned-giving officials say that they have stayed in their positions at nonprofit organizations because they are committed to what their groups do.

“I’ve had a job offer from one of the big financial institutions,” says K. Gene Christian, regional director for charitable and gift planning services at Providence Health System of Oregon, in Portland. “But I decided to stay put. Partly, maybe, because they didn’t offer me two or three times what I am making now, but mostly because I am compelled by the mission of this place. I work for a hospital system that is doing research that may someday eradicate heart disease in our community. That keeps me going, and it has kept me here.”