How to Hire a Fundraiser: New Talent Acquisition and Management in the Nonprofit Setting

How to Hire a Fundraiser:
New Talent Acquisition and Management in the
Nonprofit Setting
David A. Mersky

July 11, 2012

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Today’s Speaker

David A. Mersky
Founder and Managing Director
Mersky, Jaffe & Associates
Assisting with chat questions: Hosting:
Jamie Maloney, Nonprofit Webinars Sam Frank, Synthesis Partnership

A Service
Of: Sponsored by:

How to Hire a Fundraiser:
New Talent Acquisition and
Management in the Nonprofit Setting

David A. Mersky
Founder and Managing Director

Mersky, Jaffe & Associates
July 11, 2012

©2012 Mersky, Jaffe & Associates

Stay tuned until the end…

…for an offer
that you cannot
refuse.

The State of Philanthropy in
America Today


The number of 501(c)(3) organizations, 2002–2011

2011 charitable giving
Total = $298.42 billion

The NGO Human Resource Environment

• NGOs confront a most serious issue
– Little or no movement at the top
– Challenge to retain talent
• Succession crisis
• On the other hand, organizational
professional leadership talent deficit
particularly in development and fundraising


Talent Deficit: Challenges
• Alternative career choices
• No clear career-tracking nor plans for retention
• View professional development and continuing
education as a luxury
• Greater complexity/uncertainty in the sector
• No self-imposed CPE requirements


Talent Deficit: Challenges
• Growing number of nonprofits
– 200,000 + since 1975
– 10% of national workforce—19% in NYC
– Next 12 months, 28% of NGOs with $1 MM + revenues
plan to make senior management hires=24,000 vacancies
• Major communal bodies have lost 60% of
their donors over the past 40 years
• Insularity chokes off a sense of larger
movement to improve our cities, our nations
and the world

Prescriptive Approaches
• Educate our boards and leaders about the challenges
and crisis
• Have serious, intentional conversations about
succession planning—professional and volunteer—at
board meetings
• Value professional development and continuing
professional and volunteer education
– We need visionary funders
– Agencies should tax themselves 1% to 2% of budget for CPE


Prescriptive Approaches
• Recognize that a professional career has phases
– Each requires a different kind of development
• Create standards and benchmarks so organizations
– can measure itself against its own talent management
and retention goals
– Can compare themselves against others by sector,
geography, size, etc.


But…
…it makes little sense to spend time and money to
train and develop your team—particularly the
fundraisers—when they lack the capability for
sustainable improvement.
• ―Mishiring‖ is an epidemic
• 20% to 33% of all fundraisers lack the capacity to be
successful


Past Hiring Methods
No Longer Apply
• A bad hire—a person who does not make it
through the first year—can cost 150% (200%
to 250% for senior executives) of the first
year’s compensation plus lost opportunities
• Multiply these costs by your employee
turnover


Past Hiring Methods
No Longer Apply
• Past record of stellar performance
– Different organization, different competitors,
different offer, different donors
• Accuracy of resume
– Rigorous and methodical reference checking is
now a must
• Your ability to ―read‖ people, i.e., your ―gut‖
– More often than not hurts hiring effectiveness

A Formal Hiring Process
• The goal is to get the right people on the bus
and invest in them = talent management and
retention
• To do that
– Get off the seat of your pants
– Create a formal process to provide an objective
assessment of each candidate—the most critical
success factor in hiring today

Steps for Smart Hiring
• Form a three person hiring team
• Agree on how the position and the organization will be
described in a consistent way to all candidates
• Write an accurate job description—not ―walk on water‖
• Create a resume screening filter to eliminate unqualified
– Respond to everyone with appreciation
– Keep people informed as to where they are in the process


• Build a profile for the role
– Skills—a developed aptitude or ability, such as
– Listening
– Presenting

– Traits—an inherited or innate characteristic, such as
– Tenacity
– Intelligence
– Drive for self-improvement
– Integrity
– Positivity
– Flexibility
– Curiosity
– Coachability

• Engineer 1st, 2nd and, if required, 3rd round interview
questions
• Develop a rigorous reference-checking procedure
• Build simulation and role-playing exercises into
interview for final candidates
• Build a relationship with a predictive testing provider
• Create individualized on-boarding plan for each new
hire


I Know What You Are Thinking…
• Where am I going to find the time to do all of
this?
– “I do have a day job!”
• Look at the numbers:
– Building the process=10 hours
– Taking the first candidate through the process (rather than ―tell me about
yourself…‖)=5 hours

• Raise your success rate from 2 out of 3 to 3 out of
four where one wrong hire might cost $250,000

Some final thoughts…

• Practice what you preach—Always Be Prospecting
– Prospecting is a process—not an event
– Set aside time each month to prospect and interview
fundraising talent



• Go for EQ not IQ
– Emotional intelligence is more valuable than a 4.0
– Here are three EQ traits:
• Assertiveness
– Don’t waste time—theirs or prospects—on unqualified opportunities
– Know how to state what is needed from prospect
• Empathy
– Turn off WII-FM
– Show genuine, sincere interest in prospects and donors
• Flexibility
– Open to new ideas
– Uses new information which comes at ever faster pace.


• Flexibility
– Open to new ideas
– Uses new information which comes at ever faster pace

• Check and hire for values
– Cultural fit
– ―Tell me about a time when you helped one of your
peers or another department and received no
recognition or reward.‖



• Invest your time wisely
– Keep new hire motivated
– Provide continuous feedback and professional development
opportunities
• Private recognition nice—public approbation better
• Make every meeting a ―money maker‖
– Plan so that everyone walks away with a nugget to make
them more successful that week


To receive two free lists of
questions…
1. To ask in an initial screening interview
2. A second round interview
3. To ask when checking references
Send an email to:
david@merskyjaffe.com

Mersky, Jaffe
& Associates
Financial and Human Resource
Development Solutions for Nonprofits
800.361.8689 413.556.1074 fax
www.merskyjaffe.com

OFFICES IN BOSTON AND NEW YORK


Find listings for our current season
of webinars and register at:

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How to Hire a Fundraiser: New Talent Acquisition and Management in the Nonprofit Setting

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