Sponsor Insight

By Patrick M. Rooney, associate dean |

Barbara Coury didn’t get into fundraising for accolades, but she’s receiving them anyway.

American Red Cross President Gail McGovern recently presented the national organization’s Presidential Award for Excellence — the highest honor a Red Cross employee or unit can receive — to Coury, chief development officer for the Indiana Region, and her development team.

It’s a well-deserved award. During the past fiscal year, Indiana was third in the nation in total dollars raised against its goal, exceeding the target by 124 percent.

What’s the key to their success?

“The Red Cross has increased its emphasis on reaching out to major donors in addition to the vital support we receive from smaller gifts,” Coury says. “In Indiana, we focus on engaging with individual donors and self-accountability. Each fundraiser reports weekly on several key metrics, including the number of visits with donors.”

Those visits are paramount.

“Fundraising is about the donor, what they value, what they want to accomplish, and where that overlaps with the organization’s mission and values,” she says.

Which is why a fundraising career intrigued Coury in the first place. Originally a research scientist, she found that socially isolating. A friend’s role as a major gift officer at Purdue University appealed to her.

“To go out and interact, tell people about your organization and engage them — I thought that was important,” says Coury.

She became a development officer at Purdue’s Krannert School of Management and came credentialed as a Certified Fund Raising Executive. Following development leadership roles for St. Richard’s School and the Community Health Network Foundation, she joined the Red Cross in 2012.

“I love the Red Cross and its mission. We have services for the military, blood donation, volunteer opportunities, training and more. There’s something for everybody. And the staff and the volunteers care so much. They just want to help someone on their worst day, to make it better.”

What works

Coury shares some of the wisdom garnered during her career:

• Focus on visits. Get out of your office and see people.
• Educate donors about your mission and your work. People know the Red Cross for major natural disaster relief, but don’t realize it responds to three home fires in Central Indiana every day.
• Engage your board in fundraising and help them succeed. This extends your reach and you need their circles of influence. That’s where the magic happens. Executives complain that their boards don’t fundraise, but nonprofits often don’t equip them. Staff them and specify what you need them to do. Provide an elevator speech, tell them whom to call, trust them and hold them accountable. When they succeed, they will feel great about it.
• Celebrate successes. It’s rewarding and it builds confidence.

Coury encourages fellow nonprofit professionals to continue learning, as she has. She earned her Master of Arts in Philanthropic Studies degree through the IU Lilly Family School of Philanthropy’s Executive M.A. program and a Certificate in Fund Raising Management from The Fund Raising School there.

“The executive program’s liberal arts approach to understanding the philanthropic sector is invaluable.

“It gives you not just the skills to help, but an understanding of how and why to help, and it provides the most academically rigorous education,” says Coury. “The people I’ve referred to the program have found it changes the way they think and their life goals.”

---

Patrick M. Rooney, Ph.D., is associate dean for academic affairs and research at the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy at IUPUI.

[content_box box_type=”normal”]Thinking about continuing your education? Learn more about the Executive Master’s Degree in Philanthropic Studies and check out professional development opportunities offered by The Fund Raising School.[/content_box]

By Stefanie Krievins, coach and founder, Radiancy Coaching Partners |

According to a recent Compass Point nationwide survey, half of all development directors anticipate leaving their current jobs in less than two years. This is coupled with 25 percent of executive directors reporting that they fired their last development director.

The survey also concludes that an underlying cause is development directors are feeling solely responsible for the organization’s fundraising. Expectations are not aligned across the organization when it comes to raising the money needed to successfully deliver the mission.

The secret to high-performing organizations is that responsibility is shared between the board, the executive director, the development director and all staff.

Here are five key questions that the board, executive director, and development director can ask to ensure that the organization is creating a high-performing development function:

• What is the realistic capacity of our organization’s development staff and the technology we use to manage donors and donations?
• Beyond the development director, who is soliciting directly and serving as an ambassador for the organization?
• How is philanthropy and fundraising valued across the organization?
• Is the development director a true key leader in the nonprofit’s organizational planning and strategy?
• Are we treating people (donors, staff, and volunteers) as people and not just revenue sources or resources for the mission?

Here’s a sixth question: What does it reveal when these roles compare their responses?

The Compass report had some troubling statistics that points to the revolving door in our development functions. While Central Indiana has some fantastic philanthropic resources, we see the 18-to-24 month development director turnover, too. As a donor, I receive no individualized connection for most of my gifts.

There are some steps all organizations can take to support the development function AND the development director. Coaching is one tool to help fix this situation.

Fundraising employees and leadership can benefit from coaching in a variety of ways:

• Finding focus for an individual development team member
• Managing for accountability and follow through
• Understanding communication and work styles individually and as a team
• Supporting employees to determine what they need to be satisfied and successful in their jobs

Specifically, career coaching can help development directors land their ideal job, one that matches their skills with their compassion and that they can stay in long enough to have a significant impact.

Let’s keep asking the hard questions.

There are many factors that cause disengagement, unhappiness and ineffectiveness in the development director role.

I want to hear your thoughts. In the month of February, my colleague, Jeremy Hatch, a national fundraising consultant, and I will be discussing the predicament of development departments.

---

Stefanie Krievins is the founder, coach and trainer at Radiancy Coaching Partners. She has a master’s degree in nonprofit management from SPEA at Indiana University, completed credentialed coaching training from Erickson International, and has more than a decade of employment and volunteering in the charitable sector in Central and Southern Indiana and nationwide. She lives in a low-income neighborhood in Indianapolis as a way to stay connected to the causes she’s most passionate about: homelessness, food insecurity and helping each person get the resources he/she needs to be their most joyful self.

[content_box box_type=”normal”]

“James” was a client who found the specific mission and role where he could contribute to the culture of philanthropy. When we first started working together he knew that helping kids was where he wanted to focus his career, but that’s a pretty broad scope for a job. He was already in a role where the organization helped kids, but in an indirect way, and felt stressed and unfilled. Everything seemed like an uphill battle.

His role for the nonprofit was extremely broad (annual fund, major gifts, marketing, special events, etc., etc.) and the organization wasn’t investing much in their fundraising beyond this one position. In essence, fundraising was just the job of the development director and it got done by hosting special events.

We worked together for a couple of months so he could determine that helping educate kids was the specific mission he wanted to be part of. He also wanted a more specific role that focused on corporate philanthropy or major gifts. It was an easy, “Yes,” when he interviewed for and was offered a job focusing on major gifts that funded international children’s education and healthcare.

[/content_box]

By Paul Ashley, Advisor, FirstPerson  |

Each fall, FirstPerson’s team gets together to identify workplace trends we see emerging for the coming year.

Benefits are an ever-changing field and engaging employees from various generations is challenging to many employers.

Watch the short video here to hear from CEO Bryan Brenner and me about the 2016 workplace trends we see emerging or read the transcript.

Button Text