I hope that many of you had a great summer and are ready to close out the year in a big way! I have often been asked about the best way to manage a major gift officer to get the maximum performance for their efforts. This is a daunting task, to say the least. We are currently working with three clients who are looking for major gift officers, and I have to tell you, it is an interesting proposition. Of the résumés, 90% show the same pattern: they all change jobs every 12 months or less! That does not work well for a successful major gift program, so what are the issues? My guess is that there is no commitment or involvement from management, and there are unrealistic expectations for the major gift officer. So let’s start here.
In order to sustain your fundraising programs long term, you need to go after major gifts, which typically account for more than 50% of funding. The major gifts officer (MGO) directs this goal by raising the lion’s share of gift income and cultivating donors for continuous and, hopefully, decades long giving. This means having a strong MGO who is committed to your mission and has good reasons to stay with your organization.
A high-performing MGO is a major asset, but it takes an average of 24 months for one to reach their stride in a new organization. You may have noticed, unfortunately, that most MGOs also only stay on the job from 12 to 18 months. This puts many organizations in a revolving talent deficit for this critical role.
Repeat MGO turnover can cost millions of dollars in replacement fees and lost opportunities. Specifically, the average mid-level organization spends $66,500 to find a new MGO and forgoes $1.5 million in major gifts during MGO replacement and ramp-up. That’s a significant loss for failure to retain a high-performing MGO.
While MGOs seldom jump ship because of salary, (they do when management does not follow through on salary promises upon hiring or if they are being paid below market rates). Most, however, seek a new company whose senior management people better understand what it takes to do the major gifts job and where energizing programs, tools, and support are in place to motivate a good MGO to become even more productive.
Finding, coaching, and retaining a high performing MGO takes total engagement—a six-step, systematic approach that the best philanthropic managers follow in order to motivate and retain their direct reports. If you commit to these steps, you can help your MGO stay committed to your nonprofit and quickly rank among the top fundraisers in the country.
- Plan for long-term career growth from the first day.
Optimizing talent is a journey, not an event, and smart managers match career planning to personality. The best MGOs are self-starting go-getter types who love a mission, a challenge, a lot of variety, and an opportunity to make a difference in something important.
Set a detailed path for your MGO for their first two weeks, the next six months, 24 months, and so on. Review the plan and their progress regularly and adjust as their interests and skills grow. If your MGO has been onboard for a while, first fill in any gaps from their first months on the job, and then move forward with a career path from there.
Results: Encourages long-term MGO commitment; it is extremely important to keep them continuously engaged; supports their way of interacting with the work.
- Focus on the right tasks, with measurable goals.
Top-notch executives of top-notch MGOs know that success is about relationships and trust. They set clear, specific expectations that stretch the MGO just enough, and have consistent evaluation standards and methods to reward their success. This means forming measurable daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly objectives that create accountability and feed off of your MGO’s natural drive to excel. “Bring in more money” isn’t measurable or motivating. However, “Add fifty new $25,000 donors by end of Q4” and “Always have one third of your portfolio ready to be asked for a gift, one-third being stewarded for a future gift, and one-third being thanked for a recent gift” are concrete and actionable.
Have follow-through that dials in on specific metrics questions. Don’t just ask, “How are things going?” Delve instead by saying something like this: “Did you contact 25 new people a week? Did you convert at least half of them to future appointments? Is 10% of your portfolio still at the A level?” If your answer to these questions is “I don’t know”, you’re not engaging enough with your MGO’s goals, processes, and successes.
Results: Builds trust in your ability to support your MGO; helps you understand their activities and responsibilities; motivates them toward ever-higher standards.
- Provide meaningful, exciting options for the MGO to present to donors
Unless your MGO is emotionally connected to their goals, they will leave after six months. Your job is to create meaningful value propositions that engage the MGO and your donors, making it easy for them to “connect the dots” between your programs’ needs and their ability to support it.
Give the MGO the best, most compelling projects, with some degree of urgency and momentum for fund raising. Also, develop a menu of projects that has something for every kind of major gift donor. In addition, demonstrate how each program connects to your mission and how the money will be spent so that donors can seize its value: “If I give $100 to this program, I’m helping this group provide free meals to 25 low-income women with children”. MGOs are not magicians or miracle workers—they need the best programs you can provide to draw in the largest donors.
Results: Improves MGO longevity and personal buy-in; establishes vital system support so they can pitch your cause with concrete data and value-add. I am still amazed how many organizations do not have an up-to-date case for support.
Be available to your MGO at “key points” of the prospect cycle.
The top performer is always the one who knows their boss and “has their back”. You can do that for your MGO by leaving (and telling your MGO about) five or six openings on your calendar a month that they can automatically use to plug you into a meeting with a potential donor at a moment’s notice. Sometimes all that’s needed to swing a top prospect over is a concerted approach to the value proposition.
Results: Reinforces mutual trust and alignment; displays your organization’s high level of commitment to donors.
- Let the MGO work the way they thinks is best.
Micromanaging destroys high performance: your task is to provide guidelines and target outcomes, not instructions. Let your MGO spend the budget you set, and don’t nickel and dime on a meals-and-entertainment budget on a path to achieve a $500,000 gift. Major gifts are a marathon, not a sprint. As such, payback is not immediate, and at times, the expense is not commensurate with income as your MGO builds their major-gifts pipeline. The long-term returns, however, can be tremendous once their hard work kicks in. Give your MGO the budget, the tools, and the freedom to operate within the framework of what they must do.
Results: Motivate your MGO to do their job well; establishes mutual trust (rather than antagonism); gives them the time and resources to land the best prospects and the largest gifts.
Support the major gifts office with a “core of champions”.
Top-ranked MGOs spend nearly 80% of their time leveraging the time and energy of core program champions on behalf of major gifts. Core champions can include an entire board of directors, an individual board member, your nonprofit’s president, a successful client, an advocate, a volunteer, or anyone else closely involved with your program. Champions can support your MGO by accompanying him on a donor call, contacting donors, providing a referral for the MGO, writing letters to prospects, and so on.
Results: Motivates your MGO through unanimous excitement for their plans; engages key players in major gifts; shows donors your organization’s depth and breadth of commitment.
Make it happen for everyone.
Believe it or not, only 1 out of every 100 MGOs is a true superstar in major gifts, and one size does not fit all for how to retain and inspire your MGO. Determining what motivates your MGO and creating systems to reinforce that is a both high-level skill and a process.
Hopefully the six steps outlined here can open the way for you to retain and grow your MGO so that they stays excited about their work, excels at their job, and stretches to be their best on behalf of your organization…..and not someone else’s.
The Huddleston Group is a full-service management, consulting and training firm specializing in philanthropy (i.e., campaign counsel, audits, feasibility studies, and creating a culture of philanthropy), opinion research (i.e., donor satisfaction surveys, focus groups, and marketing research), and organizational management (i.e., board transformation, strategic planning, and capacity building).
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Good Luck
Ron Huddleston, FAHP, CFRE
President
