In the previous article we looked at why good fundraisers are sometimes hard to find.  This article will focus on what you can do to both find and keep a good chief development officer.

Now that we’ve touched on some of the themes of why hiring and retaining is often difficult, let’s discover what your organization can do to attract and retain a great CDO with staying power.  Below are a few ideas:

• -Know what you want and what you need in a CDO before you launch a search.  Do you want someone who raises the money?  Leads a program?  Writes grants?  Grows a volunteer base of fundraisers?  If you don’t know what you want then you’ll take anything you can get.  Clearly define what skills you need and what “fit” you want.  Don’t start with the faults of the past CDO either — it’ll focus you in exactly the wrong area.
• -Make setting and reaching goals “winnable”.    Remember, your top fundraising staff is the “CDO” not the “ATM”.  They can’t produce cash out of thin air simply because the organization needs it.    Backing into an unattainable goal is among the biggest disappointments of any fundraising program and its leadership.  Challenge your CDO but don’t make it impossible to win.  Setting goals has to be as methodical as producing good art – you’d never ask your opera to “improvise” the last 20 minutes of a production, would you?  Good fundraising includes just as much orchestration, so treat it with the same care and respect.
• -Establish, implement and communicate a clear and relevant mission for the organization and then make sure that the fundraising objectives are properly aligned.  It’s difficult to have a strong fund development program if the organization is weak or isn’t living up to its mission potential  As my long-time friend and colleague Paul Hogle (Atlanta Symphony Development “Czar”) often says, “An Annual Campaign doesn’t create an institution’s mission, values, and vision; it reveals them.”  His observation is insightfully correct and development leaders of merit understand that a healthy, visionary and focused organization is critical to successful fundraising.
• -Don’t cheap out.  No, it’s not all about compensation, but if you expect to attract and retain high-quality leadership, then you will have to pay for it.  Take care not to measure “fair” pay using what others within your organization are paid because it’s somewhat irrelevant.  Your measuring stick is your “outside competition”, not your internal organizational payment structure.  But remember, the pay might attract them, but it won’t keep them – compensation is therefore only one small piece to the overall retention game plan.
• -Be personally involved in the fundraising.  Good CDOs need good leadership partners.  Whatever your role – CEO, board chair, development chair, etc. – your best demonstration of leadership is to be engaged in the fundraising process.  Participate.  Help develop volunteer leadership.  Let the CDO develop the structure, plans and tools, but ready yourself to be continually active.  The CDO wants to lead but needs your commitment to be successful.

Finding and keeping quality development leadership isn’t easy, but it is possible.  Your job is to change the “possible” into the “probable” so that you have consistent staff, consistent leadership and consistent fund development growth for many years. 

Bob Swaney is a successful 20+ year veteran of fundraising for the arts and is the founder of Robert Swaney Consulting, Inc.  For more information, you can email Bob at rsc@rrsconsult.net or visit www.rrsconsult.net You can also become a Facebook fan by searching under “Robert Swaney Consulting”.

I have recently noticed that arts organizations are struggling to find smart, competent leadership for their fundraising programs.  Hiring a chief development officer (CDO) is becoming more difficult than ever and the recent trend seems to be well beyond anything that we’ve seen as “traditional”.  It’s a serious problem that has a tremendous negative effect on our nation’s arts organizations –and perhaps you have experienced this pain firsthand.

If you are a CEO, board chair or development volunteer, then you know that — at all levels of your organization — finding good people is tough and keeping them is even tougher.  But when the position is tied to generating revenue, then the effects can become more pronounced and transparent.  Some statistics cite that the average tenure of an arts / cultural CDO in the arts is now two years.  So, there’s a good chance that if you organization isn’t experiencing a development leadership “drought”, you won’t have to wait too long before it happens. 

Let’s take a moment to unpack the problem.  There are different answers for different organizations, but below are some of the common themes:

• -Fundraising expectations are too high, not clearly defined or ever-changing.  In other words, your CDO can’t win, so instead becomes burned out and moves on.  Then as you try and fill the position, good candidates (who ask the right questions) will realize this weakness and shy away from the position.  This leaves you with the candidates who either “need a job” and / or are naïve about the expectations – often resulting in the quick and frequent turnover of CDO leadership.
• -The organization does not encourage productive fund development work.  Although a primary organizational concern, “need” alone no longer works for effective fundraising (perhaps it never did, but that debate is for a future article).  Impact, vision and relevance are the keys.  If your organization is weak in mission, execution or impact, don’t expect the fundraising effort to be successful.  Simply put, fundraising can’t “fix” all of the company’s ills — in other words, you can’t go north on a southbound train.  A good CDO candidate will also identify this weakness immediately – and will stay away.
• -Times they are a’changing and some development officers just aren’t up to the challenge.  It’s never been easy to raise money, but let’s face it that we’ve likely never had to work harder and smarter than we do right now to raise contributed revenue support.  Development professionals need to sharpen their skills and they need to provide more strategy, more urgency, more leadership and more commitment to their organizations than ever before.  Some development officers can meet this new challenge, but others can’t.
• -The competition is fierce and high-quality people can be choosy.  Arts and cultural organizations are competing with universities, national-impact organizations and a host of other institutions.  Candidates make hundreds of comparisons (beyond financial compensation) that ultimately lead them either closer to or further away from your organization.
• -There is a “fear” about moving to a new organization.  Even if present job conditions are not ideal for someone of high-quality, the thought of moving to a different organization and “starting all over” can be a scary one, particularly in the current economic environment.  There are sometimes many spoken or unspoken concerns regarding the ability to be successful, the stress associated with a new place and new goals, and other uncertainties.

Now that we’ve touched on some of the themes of why hiring and retaining is often difficult, the next article will focus on what you can do to find and keep a good chief development officer.

Bob Swaney is a successful 20+ year veteran of fundraising for the arts and is the founder of Robert Swaney Consulting, Inc.  For more information, you can email Bob at rsc@rrsconsult.net or visit www.rrsconsult.net You can also become a Facebook fan by searching under “Robert Swaney Consulting”.