Your Chief Development Officer: Finding and Keeping the Best — Part One

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”.