Luring Fund Raisers Who Lure Big Gifts

As more charities seek ways to attract wealthy donors, the rush is on to hire those who can get the job done

The save-the-Redwoods League has been helping create majestic redwood parks since 1918. As research

mounted showing that the forests do best if they are joined in a chain and their water sources are protected, the organization decided to put more emphasis on safeguarding the land around the parks. But it realized it would need millions of dollars more to do so.

To persuade its donors, who mostly give $25 a year, to step up their donations, the San Francisco charity has just hired a fund raiser who knows how to obtain the money it will need, and it is looking for a development director to oversee an ambitious fund-raising effort. “In order to meet the kind of costs these programs are generating, we really need to build giving,” says Katherine Anderton, executive director of the League.

Save-the-Redwoods is among many charities that are looking for fund raisers to reach wealthy donors. Such fund raisers, for several years among the employees most in demand, continue to be hot commodities despite the slow economy. Not only are job candidates with major-gifts, planned-giving, or campaign backgrounds commanding some of the highest salaries in the nonprofit world, but many charities are seeking those backgrounds in their executive directors as well.

Whether they want major-gifts fund raisers, experts in planned gifts (donations that involve complicated tax and financial arrangements, such as charitable trusts or annuities), or campaign directors, charities have reached the same conclusion: They need big gifts.

And the gifts are out there, experts say. Paul G. Schervish, a Boston College sociology professor, has estimated that $41-trillion could be moved from one generation to the next over the coming 50 years.

Early-Career Opportunities

The anticipated wealth transfer is one reason that National Public Radio just hired its first director of major gifts, says Barbara Hall, the organization’s vice president of development. Public radio has about 30 million listeners a week, she says, an increase of 65 percent over the past five years, and its audience is extremely loyal. “It seems to me that public radio has terrific potential to receive these contributions that we know not-for-profits will receive over the coming decades,” she says.

NPR is seeking major gifts in conjunction with its affiliate stations, some of which already run their own such efforts. Ms. Hall is optimistic that many donors will be interested in contributing to both their local affiliate and the national entity. She notes that Joan B. Kroc, the late McDonald’s heiress, who left a bequest of $200-million to NPR, also left $5-million to KPBS, NPR’s San Diego affiliate. “The station is their tie to the community, but people who listen to public radio are often listening to NPR programs,” Ms. Hall says. “I see it as an opportunity for them to become engaged with both.”

Big charities that already have efforts to lure big donors are hiring additional staff members to expand their solicitations. The Arthritis Foundation is seeking major-gifts and planned-giving officers for each region of the country, says John H. Klippel, the group’s president. “You’re going to see more and more philanthropic organizations structure their fund raising regionally,” he says. “With major gifts, geography plays a big part. Someone who has a regional tie, who is closer to the roots of an organization, might see that as an impetus to give.”

Newcomers with little experience have a chance to join the staffs of small charities that are just beginning to seek big gifts, say recruiters and nonprofit employers. Tom Cullinan, who runs the National Planned Giving Institute at the College of William and Mary, in Williamsburg, Va., says he frequently finds himself training planned-giving fund raisers with no previous experience who come from tiny charities, so that they’ll be prepared to accept donations of any size or type. “They need to know what to do when someone says, ‘I want to put you in my will.’”

New entrants to the field may also get a boost from the fact that there is constant job turnover. Paul C. Light, director of the Center for Public Service at the Brookings Institution, a public-policy think tank in Washington, says that turnover, which has been high for several years, shows no signs of slowing. As has been true for some time, fund raisers last about two or three years, he says: “It’s like football coaching — you see the same people showing up over and over again, with energy and hope.”

Planned Giving on the Rise

Many groups are focusing on planned giving, which they believe has the greatest potential to help them build endowments and secure their future. Although setting up a planned gift takes some legal expertise, charities don’t necessarily have to hire lawyers. But they should look for people who have some background in financial services, says Daniel J. Burns, director of executive searches for Campbell & Company, a recruiting company in Chicago that works with nonprofit clients.

“They know about estate planning, they know about sheltering income and building wealth and deferring taxes on income realized today and gifted tomorrow,” he says. “These people have a value over and above the regular major-gifts officer. They can leverage really large gifts, although the payoff of those gifts can be sometime in the future.”

Planned-giving expertise isn’t cheap. The median salary range for planned-gift officers — meaning half earned more and half earned less — was $65,000 to $75,000 in 2002, the most recent data available from the National Committee on Planned Giving, in Indianapolis. Salaries ranged from less than $35,000 to more than $200,000 that year, the group found.

Store to Door, in St. Paul, a 20-year-old charity that brings groceries to its homebound elderly clients, is hiring its first planned-gift officer.

“We’re new in this field, but I don’t think we’re alone,” says Diane Leonard, executive director. “We’re all being asked to do more because there have been so many cutbacks, and nonprofits are being asked to pick up the slack of what government is not able to do.” She says the group is advertising an entry-level planned-giving job: “We do want them to have some experience in fund raising, some experience with working with individual donors and how to develop a system of tracking and follow-up.”

Small charities are recognizing the potential of planned gifts, says Shari M. Fox, president of the National Committee on Planned Giving. “Small-organization management and boards are becoming more savvy about giving and more focused on the long term,” she says.

Even large organizations, such as the March of Dimes and the American Heart Association, are putting a new emphasis on major gifts and planned gifts, says Christopher Bryant, a recruiter in Marina del Rey, Calif., who works with nonprofit clients. “They’ve been trying to move away from a total dependency on special-event giving,” he says. While such charities are not ending their special-event programs, he says, they are hiring planned-gift and major-gift officials.

That’s precisely what the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation, in New York, did. The organization has just hired two new major-gifts fund raisers, says Ronald J.H. Napal, the charity’s former vice president, who left this month for a new position at United Cerebral Palsy. Crohn’s is “not eliminating or abandoning special events,” he says.

But it did decide to reorient its fund raising. While special events are useful for raising a charity’s profile, he says, they generally cost more — the price tag can be as much as 30 to 40 percent of gross revenue, compared with 10 to 15 percent for major gifts. In addition, he says, major gifts tend to be larger. The price for a ticket to a special event sets a “self-imposed ceiling,” he says, whereas a major-gift officer decides how much to ask each donor for based on conversations with him or her.

Wanted: Campaign Veterans

Fund raisers who can run capital campaigns are also in demand. Nonprofit groups have long realized that they can stimulate larger gifts through a capital campaign. These campaigns traditionally were designed to meet a particular goal, such as putting up a building or creating an endowment. Now, however, an increasing number of groups conduct such campaigns regularly.

Because of the increased competition for funds, says Mr. Burns, charities are desperate to get “people who have the ability to leverage million-dollar gifts at a crack.”

One change is that more groups are interested in hiring a full-time campaign director, rather than just relying on a fund-raising consultant, says Steven Ast, who runs an executive-search company in Stamford, Conn., that serves nonprofit clients. “Increasingly, large institutions are creating a position internally for someone who has primary responsibility for the major campaign,” he says. “As more and more institutions engage in mega-campaigns, these jobs are more difficult to fill, because everybody wants somebody who has had experience in both strategizing and conducting a campaign.”

The Bishop’s School in La Jolla, Calif., is seeking someone to run a $100-million campaign to construct new facilities and increase its endowment; previously, the Episcopal secondary school’s largest campaign, $15-million, which ran from 1997 to 2002, was managed by the development director. Finding a qualified campaign director is proving more difficult than he expected, says Dave Mitchell, the assistant headmaster. “We’re having to compete much more vigorously around salary, location, and other perks to bring the best people in,” he says. One possibility: The school is considering extending to administrators the low-interest housing loans it offers to faculty members.

Mr. Mitchell attributes the difficulty to charities’ tendency to run ever-larger and more-frequent capital campaigns. “It seems as though just about every secondary [school] is just concluding a campaign, planning a campaign, or in a campaign,” he says. “Almost everyone is ramping up to increase their endowments, and every 10 to 15 years get into campaigns.”

Commitment to Mission

The YMCA of Metropolitan Detroit just hired its first vice president for campaigns, says Dan Maier, the organization’s executive vice president. Until now, Mr. Maier says, he has been the one working with a consultant on the charity’s $35-million campaign, which is drawing to a close. While the organization will retain the consultant, it needs someone on its staff to focus full-time on campaigns, which it plans to run constantly over the next several years. “We anticipate being in one form or another of capital campaign for the foreseeable future,” Mr. Maier says. The group has grown from about 49,000 members in 1997 to more than 80,000 today, he says, creating a need for new facilities. In addition, he says, many of its older buildings need to be upgraded or sold.

“If you’re going to raise funds, especially for capital, the key is consistency of effort,” Mr. Maier says. “If you’re hiring somebody for a few months or a year, that really doesn’t help you long-term. In order to cultivate a potential donor, you have to engage them, increase their interest in the organization, make sure your mission is aligned with their interests. They have to believe in you. That’s not a transaction, that’s a commitment.”