If you haven’t read this one….take two minutes now by clicking here.

Enjoy!

–RSC

For those of you who have Facebook accounts, you can become a fan of RSC by typing “Robert Swaney Consulting” or just click here.  Once there, click the “Become a Fan” button.  Simple, huh?

Read the posts, share your thoughts and ideas — but above all, be kind to the blogger and to each other!

Cheers!

–RSC

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”.

I know that many who follow this blog know and admire Elizabeth Hurley’s contribution to the fields of arts administration and fund development.  Therefore, I thought I would share the great news that she has recently been named the new Executive Director for the Grant Park Music Festival.  Click here to read more details.  Congratulations, Elizabeth!

 –RSC

Another great Indiana-based arts organization with a meaningful national impact…please pass this along to others who might be interested.  Thanks!

–RSC

Executive Vice President

The Michael Feinstein Foundation

www.michaelfeinsteinfoundation.org

The Michael Feinstein Foundation for the Preservation of the Great American Songbook is accelerating its many programs.  We need an experienced leader to successfully seek and secure funding, prepare grants, and organize small to large events.  You’ll meet with interested Foundations and individuals to develop meaningful relationships and synergies; and move our educational initiatives forward to bring this music to young people today and preserve it for future generations.  You will work directly with our Executive Director, Chairman of the Board and with Michael Feinstein.  If you love this music, have proven leadership skills and are committed to hard work and getting positive results, please contact dasadler@michaelfeinsteinfoundation.org .  Location based on candidate, flexible.  Position requires travel.

In the previous article we looked at why leadership sometimes “stinks at the head”, missing their important and critical role in the fundraising process.  But now, let’s test how your organization rates.

You may think that your leadership is successfully engaged in the process because there is a development committee that reviews lists and talks about how much money is “out there”.  But if you can’t answer “yes” to these questions then don’t be so sure:

• -Does the board have a development committee that is actively engaged in the fundraising process? (meaning, do they regularly get positive results?)
• -Do the organization’s executive and artistic leadership regularly participate in the process of identifying, cultivating, soliciting and appreciating donors?
• -Does leadership have quantifiable goals related to the overall contributed revenue target?  Do they measure them?  Do they report them to the rest of the board?
• -Does your leadership (and do you) know every single donor / donor representative who makes up the top 20 percent of your organization’s base of givers?
• -Does your leadership continue to bring new prospective names to the table to be vetted for possible cultivation?

If you can answer “yes” to these questions, then keep moving forward – you’re doing terrific!  If you find yourself answering “no” to many of the questions, then it’s time to start taking steps to actively engage the leadership so that they share the ownership of the fund development program.

There is a related issue when defining “leadership in fundraising” – who should you involve?  Some organizations define it as “all board, all artistic and all executive leadership” – often called the “cookie cutter approach” because everyone is expected to do the same work.  Other organizations define their fundraising leadership as, “our development committee only, plus selected leadership”.  Then there are multiple scenario variations which can include an assortment of leadership involvement.  I’ll leave the discussion of those definitions for another time because it does (and should) vary from organization to organization.

For now just do a “gut check” and make sure that the CDO and his / her supporting staff are active in meeting our contributed revenue goals – but that they are not alone.  The first order of business is to be an engaged leadership unit so that you can indeed answer “yes” to all of the questions above and keep the “leadership head” from stinking.

A sometimes tongue-in-cheek blogger, 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 .

I’ve read that the freshness of a dead fish can be judged from the condition of its head. When a fish begins to rot, it first begins to “stink from the head”.  The same can sometimes be said regarding organizational leadership in fundraising.

Once an organization hires a Chief Development Officer (CDO), the board and executive leadership often begin to rest easy.  After all, now that there is someone in place to handle fundraising, everyone else can move on to other organizational priorities, right?  “If the new CDO needs us, s/he will let us know”, right?  In reality, I am of course being a little tough on the leadership, but please read on…

We know that most organizations don’t truly abandon their staff, but I would submit that at some sub-conscious level the CDO’s hiring is often followed with a little mental “check” in a box to signify that all things fundraising will now be taken care of by someone who is specifically put on the payroll for that very reason.  It’s almost irresistible not to check off that little box!

Reality is exactly the opposite.  A development director is hired to engage the board and other leadership in the fundraising program, not to replace them.  A good chief development officer will see the board, the executive leadership and the artistic leadership (among others) as essential tools for creating leverage that makes the fundraising program ultimately productive. But until the leadership sees itself in that same way, the CDO has a nearly impossible task ahead.

Why is it important to engage leadership?  Simply put, because leadership leads.  If they actively “give and get”, if they set a vision and inspire others to literally “buy in” to that vision and if they focus on making philanthropic support a key priority to the organization, others will follow.  Leadership’s active participation in – and focus on – fund development sends a positive message to the community that only leadership can send.  Leadership’s lack of interest and participation unfortunately does the same…and that is when the head starts to stink!

In the next article I’ll provide some key questions to help you know whether or not your leadership is as engaged as they should be.

A sometimes tongue-in-cheek blogger, 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 .

In the previous article we looked at the initial steps to analyzing how your annual campaign is “weighted” in terms of activity and revenue.  Today’s article will wrap-up the “next steps” and give you some food for thought as you go jump the shark for good!

Because time isn’t properly leveraged, many AF programs raise in excess of (a startling) 70+% of the goal in Q3-4 of the fiscal year.  That means that it took six months to get the first 30% and (hopefully) momentum will spike in the following six months to secure the second half (can anyone yell, “SHARK”!?!).  The loading of activities is all wrong for a safe, predictable campaign.

After you know the history of how your campaign is loaded, then start with your plan.  What if you could achieve 75% of your goals by the end of the second fiscal quarter?  How would you get all of the renewals, lapsed calls completed?  How could you close most of the sponsorships?  How about the “family” campaign (board, staff, musicians / artists / etc.)? What else can be ‘moved up’ in the frontloading process?

The beauty of frontloading is that it’s only painful one time, as you move to this new cycle (as opposed to backloading, which hurts all the time).  Therefore, it’s worth figuring out and getting over the hurdles that have prevented your campaign from getting this edge.

Here are just a few of the benefits associated with frontloading your annual fund activities:

* It minimizes the financial risk

*It provides time to react for any unexpected “hits” from last year’s renewing base

*It allows for proper identification, cultivation and solicitation of new prospective donors

Frontloading takes significant planning to implement properly.  My challenge to you is begin now to design a plan that frontloads your annual fund goals, activities, timeline and results, even if you can’t launch it until next year.  Once you work through the planning, you’ll see how “doable” the process is.  You won’t have to swim the shark; you’ll jump over him altogether.

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 .