Major Gifts Is NOT a 9-5 Job

Jeff Schreifels 

Can you imagine turning down a meeting with a major donor because they’re only available after 5pm? What if they’re located across the globe? Are you going to schedule calls with them on your timezone, even though it’s inconvenient for them? I hope not. The fact is, as a major gift officer, you have to make some accommodations for your donors’ schedules. And that means your organization should be making accommodations for you too. On today’s episode, I’ve invited my colleagues Karen Kendrick and Lisa Robertson for a conversation where we make the case for allowing MGOs more freedom and flexibility in their schedules.

Recorded 

Welcome to the Nothing But Major Gifts podcast from Veritus Group featuring Richard Perry and Jeff Schreifels. Twice a month, we bring you the latest and best thinking about major gift fundraising so you can develop authentic relationships with your major donors. Here are your hosts, Richard and Jeff.

Jeff Schreifels 

Welcome to the podcast today. I’m Jeff Schreifels. And today I’ve invited Karen Kendrick and Lisa Robertson to join me. Recently, we shared on Facebook a White Paper we wrote called “The Six Secrets of Becoming an Extraordinary Major Gift Officer.” And it caused a bit of a commotion. One of the secrets that got the most attention and some pushback from some MGOs was our assertion that major gifts is not a nine to five job. And really, if you’re good at what you do and being successful in major gifts, it’s not. That doesn’t mean that you should be working ridiculous hours and be sacrificing your own health for this job. But I was taken aback by some of the negative comments from frontline fundraisers. So I wanted to talk about it. Now, there’s a lot to discuss here. But before we get too far into it, Karen and Lisa, why don’t you introduce yourselves?

Karen Kendrick 

Thank you, Jeff. I’m Karen Kendrick, Senior Director of Learning here at Veritus, been here 12 years. Love the Veritus work, there’s this wonderful combination of systems and structures and data-driven with relational fundraising. And I think the balance of the two allows us to really have those meaningful connections and relationships with donors. So I love this work. I’m in Asheville, North Carolina, and fun fact, I took a 10-day camel trip once, so that’s my fun fact for the day.

Jeff Schreifels 

What trip?

Karen Kendrick 

Camel trip.

Jeff Schreifels 

Camel! Wow, I gotta, I gotta hear about that.

Karen Kendrick 

It’s been a while. Lisa, you’re next.

Lisa Robertson 

I don’t know what to say now. I don’t know if I have a fun fact. I’m Lisa Robertson. I’m Director of Client Services and a Client Experience Leader and Karen, I love Veritus for the same reasons, right? We just have this great balance of there’s a system and a process, but there’s a reason for it, which is to develop relationships. And I love people and I love processes. So it works. And I’m here in Fort Worth. And I guess my fun fact is that I used to be a sports reporter. There we go. Also not a nine to five job coincidentally.

Jeff Schreifels 

Correct. All right. Well, thanks for joining me today. Okay, Lisa, let’s start by having you answer why we believe major gifts is not a nine to five job.

Lisa Robertson 

Sure. Okay. Well, we say right, that being an MGO is the best job in the world. And what that looks like is it’s taking that fun, hard work and putting the hours and then adjusting for the sake of our donors. And for the MGOs. Because donors are real people. They have busy lives. And our typical office hours may not be when they’re working, or volunteering or scheduling appointments or running errands or it is when they are. And so we got to adjust. This is our job, right? It’s not theirs. And so it’s important to have that availability that works with their schedule, and not just our office schedule. And also we need to adjust to fit our organization’s breadth, I mean, let’s remember that some of our fundraisers work across time zones.

Jeff Schreifels 

That’s right. Okay, all of that is really important. But being available in this way is challenging if management and the culture don’t support this approach. And Karen, what does it look like when organizations don’t value this and structure an MGO’s schedule with this in mind?

Karen Kendrick 

Yeah, thank you, Jeff. I think it’s this expectation that if you’re a good employee, that you’re in the office eight to five. And you’re also told to meet with donors when they can and so there gets to be this crazy expectation. There’s no time given back for that, those evenings and early mornings and weekends that fundraisers end up spending with donors. So that ends with, that leads to massive burnout, exhaustion, not feeling valued. I have to share Evan Wildstein and T. Clay Buck just did this adorable, wonderful example of what that looks like and feels like and sounds like, so I’m going to quote them. This is from LinkedIn. Yeah. So Evan said, “I once had a boss tell me in the same conversation that I shouldn’t hold myself to traditional office hours, while also encouraging me to make more face time in the office. Luckily for me, I discovered the multiverse and was able to accomplish both by finding my multiversal doppelganger.” Thank you. And then Clay replied, “I was reprimanded once for spending too much time in the office engaged in passive fundraising like crunching data, writing copy, submitting grants, and making phone calls. A month later, I was reprimanded for never being in the office, nobody knows what I’m doing and we are having to make decisions without you. So please, what is the source of said doppelganger?” So I just, thank you for your humor, guys. But yes, those that really tug and pull and there’s not clear expectations and not looking at the reality. And so the cost is, you know, not only losing your fundraisers, but the relationships with your donors and future revenue.

Jeff Schreifels 

Yeah, I know, I mean, if we’re going to say that this is not a nine to five job, then managers have to be flexible. Because you can’t expect your fundraisers to be working early, staying late, traveling, and then not allow the adjustment to kind of balance out their work, or else they’re going to be burned out. So Lisa, what does it look like when this is actually done well?

Lisa Robertson 

Well, when it’s done well, there’s this level of trust and accountability, right? And so if we’re managing by objectives, then we’re looking at something a little bit different, which is are the fundraisers working a plan? And for major gift officers, what we mean is they have this caseload of qualified donors, and they are relationally qualified, I should say, and they’re tiered. So the top donors get the most time and attention. Do they have goals set? Are they building relationships? Are they talking about impact? Are they learning passions? Are they asking for gifts? And if they are, then they should have the freedom to adjust their schedule to do that in a time that works best for the donors, and give them some balance in life. So we know that that’s how it should work. And I know, Karen, you have a story of when you know, that kind of didn’t quite go that way.

Karen Kendrick 

Yeah, so this isn’t, you know, one example is I used to work with a fundraiser and manage them. And we had a plan for the donors. This fundraiser was out at all the major community events and associations because this fundraiser really loved making those kinds of connections and was not working her plan. So that’s not what we’re talking about. We’re not talking about prospecting and doing those kinds of things out in the community, we’re talking about without being, seeing, connecting with donors when they’re available outside that eight to five timezone.

Jeff Schreifels 

Yeah. Yeah. So Lisa, what do leaders need to do to create a culture that supports that flexibility for MGOs?

Lisa Robertson 

Yeah, well, I think it starts with setting the expectations for the MGO and the staff. Like I used to tell my staff that I didn’t actually want our fundraisers in the office all day, right? Because if they were there nine to five daily, I was concerned that either they were not connecting with donors, or they’re gonna drive themselves into the ground, because we had evening events and weekend events. And so for the MGO, there’s this accountability, right, like Karen was talking about. There’s a plan, you gotta be working it. We can’t control the results, but we can control the work we put into actually executing that plan. Yeah. And then for the office staff, I think it’s just really important to make clear that that trust extends to all the employees, and just reiterate the value of taking care of the donors. Because when we talk about a culture of philanthropy, we say that everyone’s responsible for the donor. Well, that includes establishing this norm that the MGO may work on odd hours to do so. And that’s really to benefit the donors, which benefits the organization, which benefits everybody in the office. So it really needs to be about that as well.

Karen Kendrick 

Yeah, I think too, Lisa, I love that, is we have new expectations to set right? So what are those unspoken rules around how are we out of the office? How do we make up for that time? What does that look like? Everybody understanding what that means and what it’s about because I could see other other people in the organization feeling jealous of the fundraiser, who’s out hobnobbing with donors and never at work. So, you know, what is the turnaround expectation on emails? Like what does communication look like, and to really speak to that. It’s not sort of you say this once, and it’s done, because you’re gonna have some fundraisers that maybe take too much advantage, some that don’t take enough. And so you’ve got to keep massaging and working with that proper balance between self-care and them having some some breaks from all the extra time but also getting the work done.

Jeff Schreifels 

Yeah. Here’s what I’ve learned about managing by objectives. So let me tell you this little story. So when I was first in my career at an agency, that’s when Richard and I started to get to know each other, back in the mid-90s. And I started to work with a number of clients, which meant I had all of these folks I had to manage, who are managing all these jobs to get out as a direct response agency. So they were managing all these different dates and everything. And as a really new manager, I was tearing my hair out, because I was I didn’t know how to do that well. And so I went to Richard and I said, “Look, I need some help on like, how do you manage effectively?” And he says, “You can’t micromanage. You have to manage by objectives. Here’s a big folder for you to read it.” And he slammed it on my desk. So I had this big folder, it said, “Managing by Objectives.” But I read it because I was motivated, because I wanted to manage correctly. And I felt like I was failing. And the big point around managing by objective is that you and the people that you’re managing, you have a clear idea of what their goals are, how they’re doing it, you know, and you allow people, whatever process they have may not be the process you’d want exactly. But if they meet the objective or exceed those objectives, does it matter if they do it this way or that way? What matters is, did they do it well and did they get it done.

Jeff Schreifels 

And so after reading all of that, it was such a revelation, and it made me as a manager relax so much more. Because I no longer had to worry about how they did it. I worried more about did they actually get it done? And that’s what I managed too. Not, you know, did they do it this way or that way? Or, you know, what a micromanager would do. And it was so amazing to be able to do that. And the people around me flourished. And they didn’t hate me as much. Because I wasn’t micromanaging.

Jeff Schreifels 

I mean, it was like, “Wow, Jeff, you’ve changed!” And I said, “That’s because I read this big folder that Richard slammed on my desk.” But you know, it was a revelation for me as a new manager to be able to manage by objectives versus managing the process on how people did things. So that was so helpful to me. But so Karen, I want to ask you what is the impact of leadership doesn’t create a schedule that’s flexible for MGOs?

Karen Kendrick 

You know, I was remembering a conversation a number of years ago with folks in the American Cancer Association. And they were saying, you know, we’re looking at the impact of people leaving. That has such a huge impact on revenue, because it takes you know, a while to really qualify a caseload, have donors that will talk back to you and build those relationships. And like two years in is like when you’re really humming and there’s big transformational opportunities. And so how do we retain the great people that we have? So it’s, not only are we not able to meet donors where they need us, but also not retaining folks, is just taking off the table all kinds of potential with revenue as you go along the way.

Karen Kendrick 

And so, you know, it’s interesting, too, because of the pandemic, not only have we said this for a long time, it’s not a nine to five job. With the pandemic, people are moving to, it’s a more integrated part of our whole culture now, right? People are moving to that, saying they want that. A recent study said 94% of people said they’d benefit from one thing, and that’s workplace flexibility. And so I think there’s an opportunity here in our new day and age with different technology, with Zoom, way of communicating, way of connecting, to really look honestly at how do we look at those objectives? And how do we work in that way, that makes people more effective? And it’s getting leadership on board, it’s getting managers on board and it’s getting other people the organization on board because it is a change in culture and a change in belief about what you need to be successful. I mean, you can look at studies, there’s a PWC study that found 83 percent of employers surveyed said the shift to more remote, more flexible work, you know, really was successful for their company. So it works, but how to do it? You need to study and understand and set that up right to be able to really benefit from keeping those people long term with your organization.

Jeff Schreifels 

Yes. Lisa, how can fundraisers start advocating for a more flexible schedule with leadership and take care of themselves?

Lisa Robertson 

Yeah, well, it’s a really tough one, right? Because it goes back to some of the things that we’ve talked about over time, which is setting boundaries and practicing good self-care, which we sometimes aren’t good at. So I think it really starts with looking at, you know, what’s within our control, right? So we have some MGOs that are given flexibility, and they don’t take it. So I think the first thing that we really should do as MGOs is really examine our own drive and our feelings, maybe the stories we’re telling ourselves, and figure out where we can adjust. So we can make sure that we’re meeting our objectives and then balancing the work. Or it might start with a really honest conversation with leadership to ask, you know, how can we make adjustments that are good for the donors, my life balance, and ultimately, this organization? And I think most importantly, you really have got to have a plan and then over-communicate. Because I think, you know, to Karen’s point, the fear of some leaders is, the work isn’t gonna get done. And so how do you show that that’s being done? And going back even to the office staff, if you can show, like you weren’t just out having lunch and hoity-toity with you know, black napkin while they were having subway. You were talking to a donor and you secured a gift. It makes a difference. And it was part of your plan. Like you went there intentionally to do that, and you did it. So we can show leadership, hey, I’ve got a plan. You share with them about the donors you’re connecting with. They see the results, then you’re making the point that you can get your work done and appear to be working what seems like odd hours to everyone else, that it really does work.

Jeff Schreifels 

Yeah. All that’s good stuff. Lisa, Karen, thank you both for joining us today for this episode. And we hope this has given you some actionable takeaways that will help you create a more flexible schedule so that you can better serve your donors. If you have more questions about the secrets we believe are critical to your success as a major gift officer, you can get your copy of our free white paper, “Six Secrets to Becoming an Extraordinary Major Gift Officer” by clicking the link in the show notes. So thank you, and we’ll see you next time.

Recorded 

Thank you for joining us for the Nothing But Major Gifts podcast from Veritus Group. Richard and Jeff also write an ongoing blog that you can subscribe to for free at veritusgroup.net. Please join us again next time.