I’ve been helping several nonprofits to find fundraising professional staff over the last few months. While every position has different needs, there is the inevitable question of what makes someone great at asking for money.
If you are recruiting someone to write foundations proposals or coordinate direct mail, you have tangible, quantifiable skills to search for. But, when you are looking for someone to do major gift asks, the skills required are suddenly not so clear.
Some would say experience is what you want. I agree with that to a certain degree. Having been a major gifts officer myself, I can tell you that practice does help. But when I have to hire people to do major gifts work, I don’t look at experience as the lead indicator of success.
Instead, I look for a few natural personality traits that I’ve seen in the best major gift solicitors that I know:
Curiosity – The best major gift officers want to know about people and what makes them tick. They want to know how they are connected to each other and the causes they support. They are natural prospect researchers – they can’t help but to Google anyone they are going to meet.
Thoughtfulness – These are the folks still writing hand written notes. They send articles and gifts that they think their donors will appreciate. I even know one very successful planned giving officer who makes homemade pies for his donors. They know their donors and think about them like they would a friend.
Social adaptability – In any social situation, the best major gifts fundraiser can adapt. They respond to the craziest situation (where your donor visit includes the donors’ five children under five) and most nightmarish scenario (where your laptop leaves a scratch on the donor’s antique table) with grace and tact. (Yes, both of these happened in real life).
Self-confidence – Successful major gifts officers know that a “no” is not about them personally. In fact, they see “no” as an opportunity to dig deeper, understand where the donor is coming from, and continue the relationship. They are not easily made uncomfortable and are unafraid to ask.
But if you’re not born with these personality traits, can you still be a great major gifts officer?
Yes, you can, but you have to have one thing: passion.
This is the card that trumps all others. I know so many executive directors, board members, and professional fundraisers who may lack the natural characteristics above, but who are so inspirational, so articulate, so compelling when they talk about the cause, that it doesn’t matter if they never write a personal note, they are still successful at raising money.
And the combination of the passion and the natural personality traits? That is the person you hire or recruit as a volunteer to your major gifts effort.
What do you think? Are major gift officers born or bred? Or both?
