Early coal miners had no hi-tech equipment to detect the presence of methane gas in the air. Carried below ground, bright yellow canaries sang and chirped all day. However, the birds’ highly sensitive metabolism detected methane and carbon monoxide gas traces that signaled potential explosions, poisoned air, or both. When canaries were consumed by the effects of carbon monoxide, not only did they stop singing, they also swayed noticeably on their perches before falling. (Thanks to www.petcaretips.net for this information.) If a canary keeled over, the miners ran for their lives.
Sometimes I think fund development professionals are like canaries – chirping and singing as we go about the business of raising money for the causes we serve. I also think fundraisers are to the charitable sector what canaries were to the coal mines: a warning signal.
We don’t necessarily swoon, sway and keel over; the sector may not be in danger of exploding and we don’t have to “run for our lives” like the miners once did, but there is a warning the charitable sector should heed.
Anecdotally, we hear stories of fundraisers leaving their jobs and moving on to new organizations in droves, “job hoppers” simply moving on to a better salary, or so some would have you believe.
But my experience and my observations paint a different picture. Although I know of people who seem to habitually leave organizations quickly, I have many more colleagues who care about the causes they’re working for and who agonized over their decisions to leave, doing so only when they realized they could not accomplish what they were hired to do – often because of internal organizational issues.
There is a misconception about the tenure of fundraisers. It’s not 18 months, as many cite. Penelope Burk’s research, in her 2013 book, Donor Centred Leadership: what it takes to build a high performance fundraising team, indicates that those in management roles (4.4 years on average) tended to stay longer than those in non-management roles (2.6 years). The most notable differences in tenure were found when length of stay in positions was analyzed by age. Those under thirty years old tend to stay for shorter periods of time.
Despite what the statistics show or what our perceptions may be, there is still an issue to be addressed: 4.4 years or 2.6, if you’re in a non-management role, is barely long enough for a fundraising professional to establish and create strong relationships with donors and then steward those relationships to facilitate meaningful support to an organization.
In another study, The Revolving Door: A Study on the Voluntary Turnover (Intent to Stay) of Fundraisers in the Nonprofit Sector, the top two reasons fund development professionals cite for leaving their jobs are 1. the opportunity to make more money and 2. frustration with the work environment.
There’s probably another article (or treatise, even) to be written about the salaries of fundraising professionals. (Salary ranges go from the ridiculous to the sublime, especially in a market like Toronto.) I believe many fundraisers would stay in their organizations longer if they were satisfied with their jobs, despite making less money than they could if they worked elsewhere. (Don’t get me wrong, there is good reason to stand up for your right to make a reasonable wage, but at a certain point, I believe many of us in the sector are more motivated by making a difference to our communities than making an incrementally higher wage.)
If fundraisers are the canaries in the coalmine, than what can organizations be doing differently so we don’t stop chirping and move on to another perch? Check out part 2 of the series in the next issue.
In part 3 of the series, read about what our responsibility, as fundraisers, is to prevent job-hopping.
As the President of Cathy Mann & Associates Inc, Cathy helps clients develop the infrastructure and culture of philanthropy required to build sustainable development programs. In her role as Academic Coordinator and an instructor at Ryerson University’s Fundraising Management Certificate program, Cathy breaks down complex matters into achievable actions. During her 5-year tenure as Executive Director, Frontier College Foundation received the 2007 Award for Excellence in Fundraising for Small Shops from the International Association of Fundraising Professionals. Cathy is an active volunteer and frequent speaker. With the Association of Fundraising Professionals, Greater Toronto Chapter, she held many roles: V.P. of Professional Development, mentor and founder of its Inclusion and Equity Committee. Occasionally, she plays her ukulele in public.
