Nearly Half of Higher-Education Fundraisers Now Have Hybrid Work Arrangements

The days of full-time remote work seem to be ending for frontline fundraisers working in higher education. According to a survey by the consulting firm Washburn & McGoldrick, just 15 percent of gift officers and alumni-relations staff members said they were working remotely all or most of the time.

In January that share was 91 percent, and in May it was 81 percent.

Nearly half of fundraisers said they now split their time between the office and working remotely. That’s up from a mere 3 percent in January and 10 percent in May.

The survey is the latest in the series of six polls of frontline fundraisers and advancement leaders at the colleges and independent schools with which the firm does business. Between October 18 and November 2 the firm polled 455 fundraisers about where they work, how productive they are, and how much staff turnover they’ve seen, among other subjects. Respondents represent 119 institutions, and the results have a roughly 4-percent margin of error.

Frontline fundraisers expressed a notable shift in where they preferred to work — gravitating more toward a hybrid setting as opposed to full-time remote work. In May, 44 percent of gift officers and alumni-relations staff members said they preferred working remotely full time. But by November, only a quarter of respondents said they preferred that arrangement. Hybrid work is now the most popular arrangement: 67 percent said they preferred to split their working hours between the office and a remote site.

In general, most leaders of fundraising teams are giving their staffs the option to work at home or in the office: 63 percent said they had allowed their employees to decide for themselves whether they’d like a hybrid work schedule. Thirty-four percent of leaders said they strongly encouraged their fundraisers to return to the office. Just 3 percent said they allowed them to choose to work remotely full-time.

What has remained clear over the past four surveys is frontline fundraisers’ distaste for working in the office full time. In September 2020, 13 percent wanted to work exclusively from the office. In January and May 2021, in-office work gained some popularity, with 17 percent saying they preferred it. Now, however, just 8 percent of frontline fundraisers say they’d like to return to office work full time. When asked where they were most productive, only 11 percent said the office.

Leaders of fundraising departments, however, were more skeptical that their frontline fundraisers were able to remain productive while working from home. While 61 percent of the fundraisers said they were most productive when they worked from home, just 12 percent of development leaders said gift officers were most productive as remote employees. And only 8 percent of leaders said the same about alumni-relations staff.

Opportunities for fundraisers to split their work between home and the office seem to be the least controversial option. While 28 percent of frontline fundraisers said they were equally as productive at home and in the office, 55 percent of leaders said the same about their gift officers, and 44 percent said so about their alumni-relations staff members.

The survey also found many vacancies in frontline fundraiser roles. Chief advancement officers at 58 schools and colleges answered questions about open positions in their departments. Sixty-one percent said more than one in 10 of their gift-officer positions were vacant, and 49 percent said they had the same share of vacancies in alumni-relations positions.

Among other findings:

• 91 percent of fundraising leaders and senior staff members said they expected to meet their fundraising goals for the 2022 financial year. Among frontline fundraisers, that share was 74 percent.
• Given a choice of development-specific tasks, chief advancement officers and frontline fundraisers indicated that they had the least confidence in building a pipeline of donors and the most confidence in making the case for institutional priorities to donors.
• Zoom meetings between fundraisers and prospective donors are becoming more commonplace. In September 2020, 28 percent of frontline fundraisers said they’d met frequently with potential donors by video call. In November, that proportion had risen to 39 percent.