Working It Out

Mark Monty thought he had made a wise career move when he landed the top fund-raising job at a well-known organization that fights a dangerous childhood disease. Because the charity’s

board and staff members displayed unswerving dedication to the cause, Mr. Monty figured it would be easy to help the organization complete a $200-million campaign.

While the drive was ultimately a success, Mr. Monty’s on-the-job experience was anything but. He resigned after just two years in the job.

Board members who had children with the disease, Mr. Monty recalls, “tried to micromanage certain aspects my job.” When an investment banker’s child was diagnosed with the disease, he says, he and his colleagues wanted to offer education and support before a solicitation was made. But, he says, “the board wanted to rush into the ask.”

The experience led Mr. Monty to return to his roots in higher-education fund raising, where he is now director of development for athletics at Columbia University.

Poor Management

Nearly all fund raisers end up facing situations in their careers that make it difficult to focus on the very point of their jobs: bringing in the money their organizations need. Some obstacles are the result of poor management at the charity or difficult co-workers. Others — a stalled capital campaign or a botched solicitation, for example — can occur even in well-run, collegial institutions.

Because demand for fund raisers is at an all-time high, development officers who encounter a tough situation often take the easy way out: New jobs are easy to come by, and in many cases they come with better pay and other benefits.

But charities can be harmed by the high number of people who quit when they face a challenge. Many fund raisers leave their jobs after just 18 to 24 months, which means that they never get a chance to build lasting relationships with donors and increase contributions, experts say. It is not unusual for even well-established charities to find themselves without a single fund raiser who’s been on the job for five or more years.

What’s more, fund raisers who depart too quickly — especially those who leave several jobs in quick succession — may be hurting themselves professionally. Not only do they end up missing an opportunity to learn from career challenges; they also lose the chance to build a proven record of success that advances their careers.

“Some fund raisers make a challenge a stumbling block,” says Gail Freeman, a former fund raiser who now helps charities fill top development jobs and other executive roles. “Others make it a building block. You can see the stumbling block when you hear them describe the same story about different jobs, like if everywhere they go, the leadership changes. It’s like the woman who always picks a bad boyfriend.”

Scott Nichols, vice president for development at Boston University, says his worst professional experiences were a valuable part of his development into a leader. “The worst job you have is the one you learn the most from,” he says.

Mr. Nichols once worked for a chief development officer who had just left the corporate world to join academe. His boss had recruited several business colleagues with no training or experience in fund raising.

“There was a tremendous amount of politics and concern about what kind of office they had rather than the notion of working with generous donors or advancing education,” Mr. Nichols recalls.

“You want to be around experienced, knowledgeable people with years of success behind them, especially early in your career,” he says. “One reason I am a vice president today is that I reflect back on that and see it as the type of office I do not want to run.”

Other fund raisers say they also have gained valuable experience from strained working conditions.

James E. Thompson, chief development officer at Massachusetts General Hospital, once had a job at a university where his boss and other fund raisers made little effort to travel or reach out to donors.

But instead of going along with the status quo or resigning, he says, he spent the next three years taking on work others avoided, meeting with donors, and immersing himself in the finer points of winning donations from corporations and foundations.

In a better-run organization, says Mr. Thompson, he would probably have been assigned to just one of those duties.

The experience, he says, “gave me a chance to take on responsibilities that I might not have if there had been a more cohesive structure.” He adds: “If the institution doesn’t have adept leadership, you can take full advantage of it.”

Trouble With Trustees

In many fund-raising jobs, it’s not just the boss or colleagues who are the problems.

Often board members of the charity don’t want to make big gifts or encourage others to do so — even though fund raising is widely considered one of the prime duties of a trustee.

Ms. Freeman, the recruiter, faced that problem as a fund raiser at a medical-research institute. The institute’s board, she says, “was a very social board, they wanted to organize special events, but they were not interested in face-to-face solicitations.”

To demonstrate to her board that events are far more expensive and time-consuming than seeking big gifts from affluent people, Ms. Freeman recruited a board member who was well respected by his peers and convinced him to help her with a solicitation. In less than a year, the pair had secured the organization’s first $1-million contribution, a project named for the donor.

Inspired by that example, the institute’s trustees realized they could create new opportunities for donors to name research and other projects, Ms. Freeman says.

Over the next three years, she adds, they helped win about 15 similar gifts.

“If you can find one advocate with whom you do a successful solicitation, it is one of the most powerful ways to inspire others,” Ms. Freeman says.

Intolerable Situations

But not every problem that fund raisers face with leaders of their organization can be overcome or even tolerated, says Abbie von Schlegell, a Williamstown, Mass., fund-raising consultant. In some cases, she says, quitting is the only reasonable action.

Ms. von Schlegell says that in 2001 she left a job as chief development officer at the Shakespeare Theatre Company, in Washington, after less than two years because the organization wanted to start a new capital campaign a few months after it had finished a difficult drive to raise $10-million.

“We did the campaign by the skin of our teeth, and to have another one so fast was not my recommendation. I didn’t think it was possible,” says Ms. von Schlegell.

Many of the theater’s most loyal donors, she adds, still had outstanding pledges from the first campaign. “If you as a staff member are not convinced of your belief in the direction of the organization, you are not going to be happy, and it will get harder and harder for you to raise money,” she says.

(The theater went on to start a new campaign in 2002. To date, it has raised $72.4-million, $51.4-million of it in cash, toward an $89-million goal.)

Once a fund raiser decides that the best option is to quit, it is best to put the bitterness aside and move away from the situation quickly, experts say. But some fund raisers are too frustrated to let go.

In October, the chief fund raiser of a West Coast university, who abruptly resigned after a year on the job, shocked his colleagues by sending a nasty e-mail message to hundreds of students, faculty members, and employees at several local universities. Former colleagues of the fund raiser who work at the university and requested anonymity for themselves and their institution, describe the message as a “rant,” accusing the university’s president of being a difficult boss and an unethical one.

Because the accusations were so extreme and reflected more poorly on the fund raiser than the president, the university decided to simply issue a brief statement, acknowledging that, despite its best efforts, not every employee will have a positive experience. “When someone so profoundly shoots themselves in the foot,” says one official at the institution, “what else is there to be done?”

For most fund raisers, the best option is to stay as long as it takes to achieve concrete results.

That’s the approach M. Starita Boyce took when she stepped into the top fund-raising job at Cheyney University of Pennsylvania.

Ms. Boyce knew from the start that the university had committed little money and few staff members to fund raising or marketing, and it had long depended almost entirely on government funds rather than private donations.

But during her first weeks at work, she learned that the situation was far worse than she had anticipated. The university did not have a comprehensive alumni list, and donor files were kept in shopping bags.

She had been promised the budget to fill several positions, including an assistant vice president and a director of alumni relations. However, before she could finish writing job descriptions, the university was forced to freeze hiring because of state budget cuts. Ms. Boyce ultimately was able to hire just three of the seven staff members she had been promised.

“I cried when I realized what I was up against,” Ms. Boyce recalls.

But with the support of her husband and her minister, Ms. Boyce says, she set aside her personal feelings and focused on how she could put in place basic fund-raising techniques that would help the university get more resources. To that end, she started working long hours, some days starting at 5 a.m. and working until 10 p.m.

She reserved certain days to meet with alumni — winning the first gift the university had ever received from an individual that exceeded $100,000 — and set aside other days to approach corporate and foundation officials.

She added three direct-mail solicitations to the university’s single annual appeal, and formalized an effort to thank all donors.

She revived an alumni newsletter that had been suspended, started a new phonathon, as well as an online auction, and began holding gatherings to educate alumni, faculty members, and other employees about bequests and other estate gifts.

By the time Ms. Boyce resigned three months ago in January, after nearly five years on the job, grants to the university had increased from $400,000 annually to more than $3-million. Over the same time, contributions by alumni rose from $25,000 to $160,000 per year, and the share of alumni who make contributions had reached 8 percent, up from just 2 percent when she started.

“It was important professionally not to walk away; I would have felt guilty knowing I did not improve the advancement operation,” says Ms. Boyce who, after a short rest, is now searching for a new position.

She adds: “There are flash and burn people. I am not like that.”