Why Fundraisers Leave
Posted in Career Mobility in Fundraising Study on November 6th, 2009 by admin – Be the first to comment
Penelope Burk, President, Cygnus Applied Research, Inc.
In the summer of 2008, 39% of professional fundraisers were planning to leave their jobs at the time they responded to our survey. While the desire to change jobs was often motivated by more than one factor, these are the top four reasons why respondents were seeking another career opportunity:
- 48% – to obtain a higher salary elsewhere
- 39% – because they felt they had achieved all they set out to accomplish in their current positions
- 31% – to get away from the “old-school culture” of fundraising
- 15% – to reduce commuting time / to work closer to home
The “old-school culture” of fundraising encompasses a number of issues identified by survey respondents, such as:
- lack of appreciation for the time it takes to cultivate donors and raise increasingly profitable gifts, often expressed by Boards or CEOs as, “We have to have the money now.”
- viewing fundraising expense as unfortunate cost rather than essential investment (fundraisers themselves sometimes perpetuate this view, by the way)
- seeing paid fundraising staff as replacing, rather than enhancing or supplementing fundraising by leadership volunteers
Given the supply/demand problem in the fundraising industry, it was disturbing to learn that 31% of respondents planning to change jobs intended to get out of the fundraising industry altogether, though just over half of this group hope to continue working in the not-for-profit sector in some other capacity.