October 13, 2005 | Read Time: 6 minutes
Older managers often find it challenging to figure out what will motivate young people. Following are suggestions from fund raisers who have succeeded in working with younger colleagues:
Keep things professional. Cynthia Butler, senior director of development and alumni
affairs at the University of Florida’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, has managed many fund raisers younger than 30, including Mary Matlock, 25, who seeks big gifts.
“Mary isn’t much older than my oldest son,” Ms. Butler says. “I relate a lot differently to my son, and I have to remember that, yes, she’s that age, but she’s a professional and she’s filling a role on my staff.”
Ms. Butler says she sometimes jokes with Ms. Matlock about age-related issues, such as teasing her in the years before she was too young to rent a car. However, she says she did so only after becoming close to the younger woman and never in a professional setting.
She says that she makes a point of not letting age factor into her decisions about which fund raisers are going to work with donors who can make the largest gifts. “I’m not looking at them by age,” says Ms. Butler. “I’m looking at their knowledge, their personality, those kinds of things.”
Offer career-development opportunities. In a recent survey of 113 young people by the Washington D.C. chapter of the Young Nonprofit Professionals Network, a national group that offers workshops, e-mail lists, and other opportunities to help young people in their careers, two-thirds said that their employers had provided no or minimal professional-development opportunities. However, 104 respondents said that they were interested or very interested in obtaining training that could enhance their careers.
Not all charities can afford to pay for courses, workshops, or dues so young fund raisers can belong to professional societies such as the Association for Fundraising Professionals. But managers can make young fund raisers aware of free or low-cost opportunities, including conference scholarships and free classes in fund-raising topics offered by organizations such as the Foundation Center. The Association of Fundraising Professionals offers reduced-priced introductory memberships to people who have been in fund raising for less than one year.
Charities can benefit from the increased knowledge that young people gain from career-enhancing activities, says Chad Linzy, a fund-raising consultant in Kansas City, Mo., who has worked with many development officers in their 20s. He suggests asking young fund raisers to make presentations at staff meetings about what they learn at classes or conferences, so others can learn from them and their contributions are recognized. Fund-raising managers can also help young fund raisers strengthen their understanding of the organization and their place in it by asking them to sit in on occasional board meetings, budget-planning meetings, or other activities that are not part of their day-to-day responsibilities.
Provide a mentor. Young fund raisers with mentors say they appreciate having a close relationship with an older, more experienced professional to help them learn how to do their job, gain confidence, and come up with new ideas. A fund-raising mentor who works in the same organization is useful, because he or she knows the organization and its donors, young people say. But the Association of Fundraising Professionals believes new fund raisers can also learn a lot from mentors who work at different organizations. It offers a free mentor program, which is available in about half of its chapters.
Kathy Bricker, a fund raiser at the Ocean Conservancy, who chairs the mentoring committee at the association’s Washington D.C. chapter, says that young fund raisers who have problems they don’t want to discuss with people from their own organization like working with mentors from other groups.
Moreover, she says, a cross-organizational relationship can help both people come up with innovative fund-raising approaches.
For example, she says, “somebody in the arts will have a lot of experience with how to offer benefits, like backstage tours, that somebody in a human-services field might not even think about, because they think, ‘What we’re doing is not attractive to people.’ But in fact, people who are supporting a homeless shelter might very much like to see what’s going on behind the scenes.”
Answer young fund raisers’ questions. Teri Blandon, manager of foundation and government development at WETA, a public-broadcasting station that serves the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area, has been serving as a mentor to Carrie Keller, 28, who recently began working for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation’s office in Washington. The relationship was set up by the Association of Fundraising Professionals. She says she has often heard complaints from young fund raisers who find themselves questioning the reasons behind their assignments.
“One of the biggest frustrations I’ve heard is, ‘I don’t know where this is going. Is this just something they’re going to file? What difference does this make?’” Ms. Blandon says. “Tell them what difference it makes.”
As tasks are delegated to younger fund raisers, she says, managers should try to give them some understanding of how the work is related to the overall goals of the organization. “It makes them feel more involved,” she says.
Ms. Blandon also advises managers of young fund raisers to offer detailed feedback when a young person succeeds. “It’s really important to tell them why something works,” she says. “Managers will often give constructive criticism, which is good, but they don’t always tell people why what they did was good. And that’s important so they know how to repeat that.”
Look beyond salary to reward people. Charities often cannot afford to pay young fund raisers much in salary and benefits, but they can breed loyalty in other ways. Mr. Linzy says one of the best methods he found to keep younger fund raisers was to identify what they did best and give them tasks that make use of those skills and characteristics. He recalls one young woman who worked for him at the Kansas City Art Institute, a sociable “people person” who was offered another job making $5,000 more a year.
When Mr. Linzy could not persuade officials at the institute to match the woman’s salary offer, he told her he would put her in charge of a forthcoming special event, allowing her to work more closely with donors and other constituents. She decided to take over the event rather than accept the job offer, and the event was enormously successful, according to Mr. Linzy.
“If they can’t be monetarily rewarded, do something else,” he advises. “You’re getting them involved and giving them a voice, and keeping them there.” Mr. Linzy says he has rewarded other deserving young fund raisers with an extra week of vacation or by allowing them to take off work following special events.
