Most organizations simply don’t have enough resources devoted to training and supporting managers, which means that fundraisers are often left to fend for themselves. Without consistent input, encouragement, and accountability, your fundraisers will struggle to achieve their goals. That’s why we’ve seen increasing demand for our co-management services.

In this Question of the Month video, Jeff and Richard share more about co-management, which is a philosophy we use at Veritus to describe our role when we partner with non-profits to manage their fundraisers in major gifts, mid-level, or planned giving. We aim to provide the technical input, constructive feedback, and strategic guidance that each fundraiser needs, while monitoring progress toward their fundraising goals. 

The goal is really to support you and your organization to use your available resources in the best way possible. (And to allow you to do the work you’re most passionate about as a leader!) If you’ve felt hesitant about the idea of co-management, we hope you’ll find this explanation helpful. 

 

Read the Full Transcript:

Jeff Schreifels 

Hi, and welcome to the Question of the Month. This month, Richard and I are going to do something a little different and answer a question we get pretty frequently on the topic of co-management. So the question we’ll be addressing today is, what does co-management even mean? And why can this be so helpful?

Richard Perry 

Well co-management is a term that we came up with, years and years ago, but basically, it’s basically acknowledging the fact that there’s two very important functions that relate to management of mid-level, major gift, and planned giving officers. One is the management input that comes from the organization, like HR and all that stuff. And the other one is the technical input, that is strategies and caseload, development goals, and all that kind of thing.

Richard Perry 

Which is what we do, yeah. Now, what’s interesting, though, is a lot of people are resistant to say, Hey, I’m supposed to do this, if I’m the development director, or director of major gifts. They’ll say, isn’t that my job to like, do the whole thing? And we come and say, do you actually have the time to do the work that is necessary with these frontline fundraisers? And they never do.

Richard Perry 

Yeah, they always say they don’t, right?

Jeff Schreifels 

Right, because they have a full caseload themselves. And they have all this administrative work that they’re doing internally. Right?

Richard Perry 

Right. Right. Well, and the other thing is, if someone says, Well, we could hire a sales manager, or a manager, and that’s true. If management would allow it, they would hire a sales manager. But then the added value that we bring is we bring the best practices and the accountability and discipline from the hundreds of other organizations we work with around the world, like do this, do that. Here’s the situation. Here’s the strategy.

Jeff Schreifels 

And when we’ve gotten into it with a client after they said, Okay, let’s try this out, then they realize how important this co-management thing is. Because now the manager, the internal manager, can sleep well at night, because they know that their team is getting all the best possible coaching and strategy, accountability, and focus on their goals and with their donors.

Richard Perry 

You know what’s funny about this whole thing, though, Jeff, and we brought this up in a meeting the other day, I think you remember, is that non-profits, for years, I mean, as long as we’ve known them, have outsourced all kinds of things.

Jeff Schreifels 

Like the direct mail stuff.

Richard Perry 

Direct mail, television production, online websites, events, management, why is it such a problem to outsource the co-management of these fundraisers?

Jeff Schreifels 

Well, I think it’s because it’s newer. So they’ve been doing this for 50, 60 years on the direct response side. But this is, you know, like, we’re not even a decade into doing this kind of work. And I think it’s new, but I’m feeling like people are starting to adopt it, that we do need this co-management thing.

Richard Perry 

Right. And it brings so much to the organization. It brings accountability, it brings discipline, it brings the knowledge from others, the best practices, and it brings success. I mean, we have experienced success in every situation we’ve been able to manage. It’s been focusing on qualifying, getting the right donors, and making the whole thing happen in a way that actually develops more revenue, substantially more revenue than if just left on its own.

Jeff Schreifels 

And another great outcome of it is that these major gift officers stay.  You know, they’re not leaving every 18 months.

Richard Perry 

Well why do they stay?

Jeff Schreifels 

Because they’re finally getting someone to come alongside of them, which makes them happy, right, and helps them be successful. So in almost every case, that we’ve been working with organizations, their fundraisers stay much longer than someone that’s not managed properly.

Richard Perry 

You know, what’s funny is in a number of situations, and you recall these as well, where we went in and the revenue went way up in just a year or two way up. And then they decided, well, we’re going to take it in-house and do it ourselves. And then what happened? It just goes, it goes right back down again. Now it’s not because we’re geniuses, and these people are not smart or anything like that. It’s just that it takes a lot of discipline to do this, which is why the co-management solution is such an important one, and it’s important value add to a non-profit.

Jeff Schreifels 

Exactly. Well, thank you for joining us today for the Question of the Month. I hope this gave you some new perspective on how co-management can benefit your organization. And that we answered some of your questions you may have about it. And we would love to talk more specifically about what this could look like for your organization. You can head to our website under Services and find all the ways we work with non-profit organizations to help them create successful and thriving fundraising programs. And if you’d like to skip right to the conversation, click here to schedule time to connect with my colleague Amy Chapman. Thank you, and we’ll see you next time.