Leyna on Nonprofit Leadership

Most of the time, I think of the executive director role as the hardest job on the planet. Running a close second, or maybe even neck and neck, has got to be development director. Both jobs require leaders who can communicate a vision with passion, build and maintain relationships with many types of people, be highly organized and also highly adaptable, focus on the big picture but sweat the details, and remain optimistic in challenging times.  Let us pause a moment to give thanks to all the (slightly crazy) men and women who choose these two roles in their professional lives. Amen.

When the partnership between an executive director and development director works, it is a beautiful thing. When it doesn’t, both can come down with a serious case of what I call the “resentment flu”. I call it the flu because it is contagious — they keep catching it from one another, each feeling the other isn’t pulling her weight.

Working in our sector is hard enough. Why make it worse by failing to build the relationships you need to truly succeed? Here are three keys to developing and stewarding a strong and fruitful relationship with your development director:

Set Clear, Agreed Upon Expectations. Develop an annual performance plan together, based on your fundraising plan. In order to ensure success, you both need to agree on what success looks like, how you’re going to get there, what part you’ll each play in achieving success, and what metrics you’ll use to gauge progress along the way.

Share the Spotlight. Provide opportunities for your development director to engage with donors, work with the board, and represent the organization in the community. Don’t hog all the major donors to yourself (or hoard all the easy ones). Look for opportunities to give credit and praise to your development director, and let him know how much you appreciate not just his results, but his efforts as well. If your development director prefers to operate behind the scenes, find less public ways to acknowledge his importance to the organization.

Break Down the Development Silo. Find opportunities to engage your development director in high level conversations, strategic decision making, and programmatic discussions. Make sure that the development director and his team are well-integrated into the programmatic and operational life of your agency.  Work with your development director to build a culture of fundraising through-out the organization, so that everyone has a stake in your fund development success.

I can’t guarantee that, by doing these things, you’ll build a beautiful and lasting relationship with your development director. But with the average development staff tenure still hovering below 24 months, isn’t it worth a try?

For the past two years, I’ve managed the auction for my synagogue’s big fundraising gala. I volunteer as a fundraiser because we are a scarce breed, and because this work enables me to walk a mile in the shoes of the people I recruit. (Preferably red stilettos, but that is another blog….)

The two fantastic volunteers who created the gala and have run it for six years just officially “retired”. This year’s very successful event was their last. Pondering how we are going to replace Lisa and Susie got me thinking about the importance of succession planning for development staff, especially leadership.

With a little help from my friends, here are some tips for fundraising succession planning:

Know Thy Systems: Having a database doesn’t ensure institutional memory.  Robert Weiner, fundraising technology consultant, often encounters problems in the transition between Chief Development Officers. “I encounter problems when the prior CDO has had a custom system built, or really didn’t use or care about the database.  I also see lots of organizations that have a donor database, but where the CDO does all her tracking in Excel.” (Leyna: Yikes!)

Document, document, document: Make sure you have a written fundraising plan, including major strategies, calendar, tactics, and responsibilities. Be sure that your fundraising budget is annotated with clear information about variances in both income and expenses.

Share the Love: Laura McCrea, of Laura McCrea & Associates, says, “Development Directors often develop a wonderful understanding of their major donors and the nuances of how to keep each donor engaged and inspired.  All too often, this knowledge – which can’t typically be summarized in database fields – is not shared with other staff and volunteers on a regular basis.”   You don’t want knowledge of the passions and pet peeves of your biggest donors walking out with exiting staff.

Build Bench Strength: Your annual fund development budget should include a line for professional development, and not just for your Development Director. The best development leaders continually groom staff for more responsibility and provide skill development opportunities. (Example: Fundraising Day!)

Plan for the Unexpected: Prepare an emergency succession plan. There is no better way to identify your vulnerabilities than to develop a plan for dealing with the unexpected departure or absence of your Development Director. Theresa Nelson, an experienced interim Development Director, suggests creating a transition binder containing all the key information that your Director of Development would want were she new on the job, and updating it annually.

Pray. (Can’t hurt!)

Next month: Building a strong ED/DD partnership.

Last week I attended a panel discussion on board governance at CompassPoint’s annual nonprofit conference. Speaking about interviewing prospective board members, Destiny Arts Center board President Erica Webber said: “We screen for character first.”

It turns out that she meant “we screen for fit with our mission, values and culture”. Not quite the same as character, but a really good idea. So what else should you be looking for in evaluating a perspective board member?

Many of us have enthusiastically voted on a new board member based on her profession and connections — a lawyer! a banker! an heiress! — only to discover that our new colleague doesn’t play well with others. I advise you to throw out the crayon box theory of board recruitment (one red, one blue, one lawyer, one techie…) and focus instead on what it takes to be an effective board member.

Screen for successful past participation in consensus-based groups. Look for skill as a listener. Search for the dual abilities of questioning the status quo and maintaining solidarity outside the board room. Seek out deep commitment to and passion for your mission. A pauper who has missionary zeal for your work is often a better fundraiser than the millionaire who only wants to write her own check (unless it is an awfully big check….)

When you bring on a new board member, you also get their contacts, networks, Faceboook “friends”, etc. Be sure that you are recruiting for divergent streams of contacts, rather than bringing on people whose outside lives mirror those of other board members. Board members should be constantly expanding your circle of admirers, not circulating your story to the same pool.

Recruiting new board members is high-level search.  Think of it as “hiring” members of an elite group that, collectively, are legally responsible for holding the organization in trust for the people you serve. Therefore, you should spend at least as much time screening and reference-checking potential board members as you do on hiring line staff, right?

Next blog: How do you find great board candidates?

The last time I wrote, I told you that the secret to hiring success is to hire happy people. Easier said than done, I realize. I can’t say I have a perfect track record, but I do have some ideas on how to screen for what we might call the “contentedness factor”.

Making the right hire (finding a good fit for the job and your organization) has a lot to do with expectations. You want to find someone whose expectations fit what you can offer. I learned this years ago when I was the VP of Human Resources for Smith & Hawken (may it RIP.)

Prospective S & H employees used to come crawling on their knees as though toward Mecca, out of a desire to work for such an environmentally correct company. I had to convince candidates that the company’s green mission wouldn’t matter for long if they hated data entry.

Here are some things to consider in determining whether a candidate is looking for more than you can offer (i.e. happiness or meaning in life), or worse, looking for a place to spread the misery around.

Do the reasons the candidate left prior jobs make sense, and seem unrelated to performance or professional relationships? Does she make any negative references to former employers? Does your job seem like the next logical step for this candidate? If not, what does your gut tell you about their reasons for being interested?

Determine through resume, interviews, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc. what kind of life this person has outside of their profession. Got friends? Family? Other passions and ways of blowing off steam? All good indicators. (Yes, you should Google candidates and read their Facebook pages and LinkedIn profiles.)

Last, references are just as important as interviews. You can ask a reference: Is Jane a happy person? You can ask how Jane got along with colleagues. You can ask if Jane was a mentor and support to others. You can even ask if Jane was fun to be around. (I promise, these questions are not illegal.)

Of course, you need to hire someone with the skills and experience to do the job. But I’d pick a happy person who needs a bit of training over a miserable yet highly skilled person any day.

I’ve been hiring line staff, managers and executives for my own team and for clients for the past 25 years. I’ve overseen human resources for two national companies, and taught classes on recruiting and hiring. All my years of experience and wisdom about how to “get the right people on the bus” can be boiled down to three words: Hire happy people.

I’m serious. I don’t care how talented, experienced or educated a candidate is, if she is unhappy with her life she will be a bad hire. We’ve all experienced this scenario: A single employee or board member impacts your entire organization through negative behaviors. A person who feels the need to build himself up through putting others down, or who sees every glass as half empty, or who constantly expects the worst of people, can wreak havoc upon your organization. And because this person may be very competent at doing his job, it is often hard to get rid of him (or “free up his future” as I like to say.)

Hence my advice: Hire happy people. So what do I really mean? I’m not talking about screening for bubbly, ever-smiling, “power of positive thinking” types. What I mean is that you need to discern whether someone genuinely likes herself — is comfortable in her own skin. You want to hire someone who has a life outside of work; a life rich with activities that provide enjoyment and meaning. Because a job with your organization, no matter how fabulous and meaningful your mission, cannot provide your employees with their life’s meaning. Trust me on this one.

Hire people who have healthy, nurturing relationships with close friends, a partner, kids or a spiritual community (or all of the above!) Hire people who have a passion for beekeeping, salsa dancing, dachshund racing, or something else entirely unrelated to their day job. Hire people who speak well of former employers, take personal responsibility for past career mishaps, and who will be okay whether or not they get offered your job.

Now, am I saying that you don’t have to screen for the right skills, experience, aptitude and cultural fit? Of course not. But no matter how skilled, qualified and mission-driven an applicant is, don’t hire her if she is unhappy. I promise you — unhappy people bring their unhappiness to work with them , and spread it around like a bad cold. You have enough work to do without having to worry about preventing an unhappy virus from infecting your staff.

So how do you screen and interview for the “happiness” factor? That’s another blog…