The investment of time, money, training, and expertise required to run a successful major gift fundraising program is immense. You are committing relatively large amounts of resources to reach out, engage, and build trust with wealthier and extra-generous supporters who care about your nonprofit’s mission and want to use their finances to make a difference.
But gift officer turnover is a major hindrance to sustained revenue growth. It can throw a wrench in the machine right when it was starting to produce big results.
The frustration from losing top fundraisers is felt across the organization. Stress among staff increases because they may be a bit more unsure if the same level of funds will keep coming in. Leadership gets nervous because they know how large a percentage of revenue your organization gets from its biggest donors.
Effective major gift fundraising isn’t just about ask, ask, ask. This sort of lazy, activity-driven approach is actually a cause of high turnover. But even if you train people well and establish a healthy culture, gift officer turnover can kill your momentum.
That’s why you want to be continually prioritizing how to make sure your top fundraisers feel empowered, appreciated, and not overworked.
Here are six costly ways gift officer turnover hurts fundraising.
1. Lost time
Time cannot be replaced. A lost gift officer represents a loss of time in several respects.
First, all the time that a gift officer spent engaging people, cultivating relationships and soliciting gifts from donors who haven’t yet given is lost – unless their replacement is able to resume those relationships without losing any momentum. That is very hard to do, especially for all the supporters the departing gift officer was working with.
More likely is that the new gift officer has to start from scratch and rebuild trust and rapport with all the supporters their predecessor was working with. This delays giving, and increases inefficiency.
In addition, you have to spend more time hiring and training new gift officers. The more turnover you have, the more time you spend on this, meaning less time devoted to actually raising funds.
2. Lost money
This goes hand in hand with lost time, because time is money.
Hiring and training costs money as well as time, because you’re still paying the new gift officer as they get up to speed with your organization and their caseload. You’re also paying the people conducting the onboarding and training processes. And you have to fund the hiring process which may include recruiters in addition to people you’re paying in-house.
And of course, in addition to all the costs of hiring and training, you’re also losing money from donors. After their trusted contact departs, many donors will pull back and reconsider their gifts. Or, they’ll just wait because no one reaches out to them for a while during the transition to the new gift officer.
Some would-be donors will drop off entirely, and you’ll never recover the revenue they would have given.
3. Loss of detailed knowledge about supporters
Human relationships are fluid and unique. All the conversations the previous gift officer had with the supporters in their caseload enriched the relationship with those small little details that come up when we meet with people.
Only the person having these conversations will know these sorts of details. You can’t document everything. And even if you somehow could, no new gift officer will be able to read or listen to all of it, let alone remember it in conversation.
It won’t be the same, because it can’t be the same.
There is no shortcut to rewarding, deep relationships.
4. Lost opportunities with untapped donors
For many donors, the timing of their major gift donations is critical. For various reasons such as their life situation, tax realities, business situation, and family dynamics, many times a major gift needs to be given during a certain window.
A previous gift officer may have known this and been working toward it. But by the time the new gift officer gets settled in and reaches out to all the supporters in their caseload, some of these opportunities will have passed by.
The donor’s situation has changed, and they either no longer can, or no longer want to give the gift they’d been planning. Sometimes, they may have just found another organization with a similar mission and given your donation to them, because they had to do it during a certain window.
These sorts of opportunities may never come again. The more turnover you have, the more lost opportunities like this will leave you regretting what could have been.
5. Lost institutional knowledge
There’s detailed knowledge about donors and supporters. And then there’s detailed knowledge about your organization.
Imagine a gift officer who worked with your organization for five years. Ten years. Twenty years. Their depth of understanding of your mission, previous donors and beneficiaries, stories of impact, how your mission has changed over the years, intricate understanding of your various programs – all of this gets lost when a veteran gift officer departs.
And again, even five years is long enough to amass an impressive array of institutional knowledge. All of that disappears when they leave, and there’s no way to train the new person. Only time can deliver this level of understanding.
And supporters benefit when gift officers know the mission and all your programs and history, because you can ask better questions and connect donors’ desires with the heart of your mission.
6. Erosion of quality among your fundraising team
There’s such a thing as being great at your job. That’s true in every single profession, and gift officers are no different. There is A-level talent, and then lower levels of skill. Some of this skill and talent grows over time the longer a gift officer works with you. If you’re investing in ongoing training, you can certainly level up your team of fundraisers over time.
When gift officers leave – especially your best ones – the whole organization suffers the loss. You must now rely on the other fundraisers who aren’t quite as effective. Declines in revenue are almost sure to follow. And if you struggle to find replacements for your top gift officers, the loss in revenue can continue for many years.
Plus, the all-star gift officers probably were helping improve the effectiveness of the others on your team. So not only do you lose the revenue the top fundraiser was bringing in, but the rest of the team may decline in effectiveness too.
Invest in Your Gift Officers and Reduce Turnover
Obviously, some degree of turnover is inevitable. And ultimately, eventually, everyone can and must be replaced.
But at MarketSmart, we’ve studied gift officer turnover for many years. The data is troubling. Different studies show variations in results, but it’s typical to find reports saying that the average gift officer remains employed at the same nonprofit for less than two years.
Two years is barely long enough to nurture relationships with one cohort of supporters long enough to generate big gifts. It’s not uncommon for taking a new supporter through your qualification and cultivation process to require 12 to 18 months before the first major gift is given.
Make it a priority to work at keeping your gift officers for more years.
If you can bump up your average tenures by just one year, two years, or three years, the resulting increases in revenue, expertise, talent, institutional knowledge, and all the other benefits of an effective team will flow across your entire organization.
What can you do?
It would take more room than we have here to give this question its due attention. But here are a few ways you can help reduce gift officer turnover.
1. Increase pay
Money is certainly not the primary reason most gift officers leave. Most leave due to burnout, feeling de-valued, overworked, or constantly distracted by being yanked away from what should be their primary focus – their donors.
But, getting paid well matters too. If a person is good at their job, look at ways to provide financial incentives to stay and continue to perform at a high level.
2. Provide more ongoing training
Everyone can always improve, especially when it comes to relationship-driven jobs such as major gift fundraising.
Look for high quality gift officer training opportunities. Conduct in-house training sessions. Learn how to ask better questions, how to respond to supporters, how to conduct outreach calls and communications, how to advance donors on their own personal hero journey, and how to utilize technology such as MarketSmart to better identify major donors who are actually ready and qualified to make gifts.
Training is a form of empowerment. It shows you value their work and want them to excel.
3. Hire a Lead Outreach Associate (President’s Liaison)
Gift officers can easily get lost in metrics, spreadsheets, data, and the early outreach tasks related to reaching out to new prospects. If you have a large enough team of fundraisers, you may be able to help them focus on deepening their relationships with their main supporters by offloading some of these earlier tasks to a new position called a Lead Outreach Associate.
That’s a title you’d only use internally. My friend, Jim Langley, prefers this donor-facing title: President’s Liaison. I agree!
We’ve written about this position before. Here’s a job description for what this position would do.
4. Reduce workload
Look for other ways to reduce workload so you don’t burn out your best fundraisers. Don’t keep adding things to their plate that aren’t related to their core job function.
For example, don’t make them help with events. Don’t ask them to comment on fundraising strategy. Consider if they really need to attend all the meetings they’re attending now.
5. Hire better
Lastly, work on improving your hiring process for gift officers.
Here’s a list of ten qualities of the best gift officers. Look for ways to identify these in your hiring process, and you’ll reduce the time lost on people who aren’t going to succeed in the position.
Related Posts:
- Why your job is really about developing heroes, not dollars
- How to Deepen Your Major Donor Relationships
- Most Senior Fundraisers Don’t Need Training; They Need Treatment
- The 7-Step Donor Journey from Stranger to Philanthropic Partner