To bring to life the concepts and ideas discussed in the Future of Philanthropy series, we bring together experts in the field, who can offer first-hand experience and important insights on these topics. This Q&A focuses on leadership—how the rapidly changing world of philanthropy is placing new and different kinds of demands on advancement leaders.
Panelist: Birgit Smith Burton is Board Chair of the Association of Fundraising Professionals—for nearly a decade, she has served on the global board of the Association of Fundraising Professionals (AFP) and has the distinction of being the first African American woman in AFP’s 62-year history to be voted chair of the AFP Global Board. She is also the Chief Executive Officer of AADO, the African American Development Officers Network, which she founded at Georgia Tech in 1999 to provide professional development, education, employment support, mentorship, and networking opportunities for fundraisers of color. During her 26-year career at Georgia Tech, she led her team in raising over $750M from private philanthropic foundations to support programs, scholarships, and capital projects. She co-authored the book, The Philanthropic Covenant with Black America, contributed to the book Five Minutes for Fundraising, A Collection of Expert Advice, and tells her personal story in the book Collecting Courage, which shares the lived experiences of Black women and men working in the nonprofit and charitable space (published fall 2020).
Panelist: Adam Gerdts is Senior Vice President for Philanthropy at the New York Philharmonic. Since joining the NY Phil in 2021, Gerdts helped rebuild the development team, which at the conclusion of FY24 achieved a 30% increase in results from pre-pandemic levels. He leads all areas of development and board relations for the NY Phil now entering its third season in the recently renovated David Geffen Hall. Prior to joining the NY Phil, he served as Vice President for Institutional Advancement at Yeshiva University, where he helped adopt advancement best practices, increased productivity, and launched YU into its current Rise Up Campaign. He spent more than a decade in multiple advancement roles at his alma mater, the University of North Carolina where he started as the Director of Young Alumni, then went on to hold several advancement roles at UNC’s Kenan-Flagler Business School—first as Regional Director, then Executive Director, and finally as Associate Dean for Advancement. Gerdts began his career at Manhattan Theatre Club before a stint at American Friends of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem lead him into 15 years of work in higher education before returning to his work in services of the arts.
Panelist: John K. White, Jr., is the Vice President of Advancement at National Medical Fellowships, which works to broaden the pathways to medical education for students from communities underrepresented in medicine, as well as provide leadership opportunities to diversify clinical research and support the future success of medical students and current practitioners. Prior to joining NMF, John served as Vice President and Philanthropic Service at the Greater Atlanta Community Foundation. He previously served in multiple advancement roles at Morehouse College and Morehouse School of Medicine. Before joining Morehouse, he founded a nonprofit dedicated to fighting childhood obesity, serving as the organization’s CEO and President. He began his development career at North Carolina A&T State University.
Moderator: Clare McCully is a Senior Consultant with Aspen Leadership Group and brings more than 30 years in leadership roles in nonprofit institutions and higher education. Most recently, she was Chief Development Officer for the MGH Institute of Health Professions, the healthcare graduate school founded by Massachusetts General Hospital, where she also served as Interim Chief of Communications. Clare served as Vice President for Advancement at Newbury College, a Senior Consultant for Graham-Pelton and a frequent presenter at the AFP MA conferences. Prior to that, she led the New England Office for the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship, expanding the inner-city program to gateway cities in MA, CT and RI. And she created the Massachusetts Educational Foundation Association, bringing together all education foundations in the Commonwealth, and was instrumental in assisting in the formation of the National School Foundation Association. She previously Executive Director of the Newton Schools Foundation, the largest public-school foundation in Massachusetts. Clare began her development career at the New England Wildflower Society, the leading organization researching, protecting and cultivating native plants, spearheading their first capital campaign for an education center.
Clare: Leadership is something that I think about a lot, and something I talk to hiring organizations and candidates about every day. I would love your perspectives on how much you think the leadership challenge in philanthropy has changed over the course of your career. How are things done differently today in building and leading teams? Birgit, can you start us off?
Birgit: Of my 37 years working in the nonprofit sector, the past 27 have been focused primarily on raising money from private philanthropic foundations. I’ve served on many different committees as a volunteer and have worked with associations such as the Council for Advancement and Support of Education, CASE, and the Association of Fundraising Professionals, AFP. And of course, I’ve shared best practices with my counterparts at institutions like MIT, University of Michigan, and Caltech.
In my experience, leadership has changed in the same way that the fundraising profession has changed. For example, people in leadership at the AVP level, and certainly at the VP level, have been mostly men, but we’re finally seeing that change. The VP for development I reported to for 25 years was succeeded by a woman—a friend of mine. To see her rise to be a VP at a major university was inspiring and very encouraging.
I’ve also noticed shifts in fundraising expectations, particularly regarding goals and metrics. As CEO of the African American Development Officers network (AADO), I’m increasingly seeing individuals seek personal coaching due to heightened demands from CEOs. Recently, I assisted the CEO of a small nonprofit who wanted to hire a VP of Advancement. The expectation was for this new hire to generate $8 million in fundraising within a year, yet the salary offered was not competitive, making the expectation unrealistic.
Meanwhile, larger nonprofits, especially in higher education, are adopting corporate-style structures with more AVP’s to attract and retain young talent. However, these positions come with increased reporting requirements and metrics. While the approach is donor-centric, it emphasizes a more quantitative management style for the teams.
Clare: John, Adam, would you like to jump in?
John: Birgit’s last points resonate with me, because one of the biggest changes I’ve seen is driven by the donor base, which is significantly more sophisticated than it used to be. I find that the VP skill set is increasingly corporate, needing a better understanding of business, business cycles, finance, and those kinds of topics. I have an MBA, which brings a different perspective to philanthropy compared to my boss at my first job, who taught me fundraising. He was a liberal arts guy who drove a rusted-out Volvo and looked the part of the inconspicuous noble fundraiser.
Today, I find that if you want to engage with a Dan Cathy, or an Arthur Blank, or donors at that level, they’ve got to see in you the same level of knowledge and expertise that they see in their own teams—they need to see that you’re just as entrepreneurial and that you understand outcomes, because they are looking at philanthropy as a type of investment.
In addition, the transfer of wealth in the United States is bringing a greater diversity in the donor base, which necessitates a greater diversity in our teams. For example, right now I am very aggressively recruiting for top Latino talent. When I came into the profession there were no African Americans, and few women, and at one time, Birgit was the only woman of color at any major, predominantly White institution on the East Coast. But now donors are more diverse. Even if wealth is still highly concentrated, we are beginning to see a shift toward a more normative distribution of that wealth across different communities. That’s another way the donor landscape has changed, and the profession has to respond to it.
Adam: Building on those points, the development profession is a fairly new idea in the scheme of things. Not too long ago, faculty members played a key role in running university fundraising programs. A view of development as its own profession has continued to take hold over the years, and the investment that some of our larger institutions have made in leadership development has been very impressive.
I’ve been the beneficiary of a lot of those programs, and something John said really resonated with me. When previously, you could get by on charisma, charm, and courage, today you need to have a much higher level of sophistication to be successful in a leadership role, because you’ve got to be able to converse with wealthy donors in a way that resonates with them and how they look at the world.
The other observation I’d add is that, from a very tactical standpoint, we have learned since 2020 that leaders need to be flexible in the way we work with our donors and lead our teams. For example, the pendulum has swung from in-office, to fully remote, to hybrid, and I’m seeing another swing back to a higher expectation from boards and CEOs for mostly in-person work. That’s an example of how we, as leaders, have to be flexible as we adapt to circumstances and bridge the gap between the expectations our CEOs and boards, versus the expectations of early career and mid-career professionals, and how they expect to operate in a professional environment.
Clare: In the article, we raise the issue of connectedness, because leadership is not a solo sport, especially in advancement. We have to foster connectedness all throughout the organization, from the C-suite to the frontlines. And that can’t happen without trust, which another key talent for advancement leaders. So, let’s drill down on those two topics a bit and talk about what has changed, and what the evolving leadership challenge is like in those areas.
Adam: This issue stuck out to me right away, because I don’t think it’s a given that philanthropy leaders have a seat at the table as comprehensively as is required. A lot of organizations still look at philanthropy as, ‘You just bring in the money, so don’t worry about the strategic operations of the institution.’
So, we have to advocate for why we need that seat at the table. If I’m not intimately knowledgeable about how strategic decisions come together, it reduces my effectiveness out in the field engaging with our biggest donors and our board, and I won’t be as effective at getting my team prepared to engage donors up and down the pyramid. So, I think we can’t take for granted the need to advocate for ourselves in forging a connection with institutional leadership.
We also need to put intentionality into advocating for philanthropy with our colleagues, educating them that development is the ultimate team sport, and everyone in the organization has a role. Intentionality also plays a crucial role in building high-functioning development teams. A generation ago, fundraisers were told, ‘Here’s your list of names, go bring home as much as you can.’ As we professionalize and develop more specialized roles within the development team, we become part of fundraising ecosystem. Each part heavily relies on every other part, even if sometimes we’re physically separated from each other.
Finally, I’d just say that trust is as much about listening as anything else. Being present. Being accessible. Seeking out your colleagues. Doing what you say you’re going to do and finding ways to advocate for their needs and hopes for the organization. Never taking for granted that colleagues understand we help fund their part of the organization, and that philanthropy is an engine that keeps the entire organization functioning.
Birgit: Adam said one thing that is really important, and a key to all the trainings I do and all the work I’ve done throughout my career is listening. To illustrate this, I often tell a story about a consulting role I had with a large higher-ed institution.
I was brought in to conduct workshops with a mostly White development team that had only one Black professional on it. They wanted the team to learn how to engage with alumni of color. So, as part of the program, I put together a panel of Black alumni, and the development team could ask whatever questions they wanted. One alumn was very hostile to the idea of being solicited by a White team member, because he believed a White fundraiser wouldn’t be interested in his priorities, but only in the institution’s priorities. After that initial meeting, the team was scared to contact him and basically put him on the ‘do not call’ list. But I had visited him and his wife at home, and after spending time with them, it was clear to me where their passion was and where the opportunity might be to solicit a gift.
About two weeks later, a senior fundraiser called me and said, ‘You’re not going to believe it. He just made a half million-dollar pledge, and you won’t believe who asked him.’ Turns out that three of his classmates, who were corporate executives like himself, had asked him to join them in making a pledge. And one of the first things they did was apologize for all the racism and mistreatment he had endured decades ago as a student—so much so that he wasn’t interested in being solicited for a major gift to the university.
But the development officer really listened and shared this with some of his classmates who were partnering to make a significant gift during the school’s capital campaign. They took his concerns deeply to heart, made him feel included, and most important, they apologized. Because they heard where his pain and disappointment were coming from, they figured out how to engage him in a way that mattered to him, and they were able to turn that relationship around. So, we can have all the metrics, and use all the modern tools to try to be successful in fundraising, but trust is a huge part of building connectedness to donors and colleagues, and listening is an absolutely indispensable part of building that trust.
John: Again, I share both Birgit’s and Adam’s sentiments. What I’d add is that solid connectedness requires that the board and C-suite understand the donor landscape is changing. Successful fundraising requires that advancement professionals be engaged with the entire organization, whether that’s marketing, operations, or finance.
The example I’d use is Morehouse’s cultivation of Mr. Bloomberg and his team. In 2020, when COVID hit, we had already been cultivating Mr. Bloomberg for quite a while. Our CEO had the great idea of investigating why Atlanta, with the wealthiest African American population in the country, was lacking vaccine centers in large parts of the city. I was as baffled by it as anybody else, and I’ve been Black now for 50 years. Mr. Bloomberg understood the need, and he was as baffled as the rest of us. Because he was already in the cultivation cycle, it became an opportunity, but it required us to pivot and for every part of the organization to show up and contribute.
That’s what good philanthropy is. It starts with listening, but another part of connectedness is understanding that the donor is only seeing one organization. They don’t care about what piece is marketing or programs or finance. From the donor’s point of view, we are a single organization. They think, ‘This is Adam, and my relationship is with Adam, and I’m assuming that you guys are sophisticated enough to give the support that Adam needs to ensure that the entire organization can provision the services needed to steward the gift that Adam is asking for.’
And so, I think connectedness starts with the organization edifying and giving validity to the work we do, which then supports us in building and maintaining donor relationships. I’m notorious for taking my people out to lunch. I think it’s important that I have a great relationship with my marketing colleagues, my program colleagues, and especially my finance colleagues.
Clare: That’s actually a great segue to the leadership challenge in managing development teams. A lot of what you’ve all talked about with flexibility and an ability to pivot to meet donors where they are depends on an entrepreneurial mindset. John, you even used those exact words. How important is that, and how do you model it for your teams?
Adam: To answer that, I’d go back to a previous answer about modeling trust. You’ve got to model, on some level, the kind of behavior that you want to see on your teams, and that takes getting your hands dirty. I think that the trap for many of us in these higher-level roles is that we start to lose touch with what the day-to-day work looks like for early- to mid-career professionals. I’ve found that a way to build trust and teach entrepreneurship is to is to make sure that I’m practicing what I preach. So, for example, at the end of the fiscal year, when everyone gets their list of lapsed donors for outreach, I make sure I have my own list. It goes to building trust that you’re doing what you say you’re going to do, and on some level, it’s the same as what you’re asking others to do. In your work, then, you model an entrepreneurial approach that they can identify with it and relate to it. I have found that really helpful.
Birgit: I really want to underscore what Adam said. I see it quite often where there are high expectations of the team coming from leadership, but those same expectations are not being mirrored by leadership for themselves. And so, I’ve got my AADO hat on, and my AFP hat on as well, because when people come to me and share their challenges, those often center on expectation of the rank and file to meet their goals without the leadership having similar responsibilities.
I’d like to emphasize Adam’s point about mirroring behaviors. I frequently hear from both AFP members and AADO members that it’s challenging to grasp the expected behaviors when there are limited examples within the leadership team.
John: What has worked well for me is to make everyone on the team feel that you’re vested in their individual success. And so, I talk a lot about what everyone’s ‘next’ is. Even with my executive assistant, I like to always reinforce that she can be whatever she wants to be in this industry. Because people don’t always know what’s possible until they do it, or until you show them that they can do it.
A lot of people associate what we do with sales. It’s not sales. We don’t have a product. And, believe it or not, what I found is that the most successful fundraisers are very linear, very introverted people who happen to understand that good listening is a mode of high sophistication, and donors really appreciate that. People just want to be heard. And I think it goes back to that trust as a building block of good fundraising.
I also think it’s helpful to share your own vulnerabilities, let them witness some of the mistakes, the uncertainty, discomfort. When Morehouse School of Medicine, under the leadership of Dean Valerie Rice, outraised what consultants told her was possible, she set an outsized $200 million fundraising goal. That was scary. And I shared that fear with the team.
It’s okay to share vulnerability, because as a team, we need to be invested in each other. This is a team sport. That’s what they told all of us when we got into this profession. And I think that trust is concurrent with how inclusive you are able to make people feel—conversely, people cannot feel included if they’re only permitted to share in the successful parts of the job, and they’re excluded from the vulnerable parts of the job.
They also feel vulnerable in their jobs, and feeling that vulnerability is shared among everyone, including leadership, means we all share the same mission of figuring out how to raise money by delivering the enhanced outcomes and impact that donors are aiming for.
Adam: I love that you highlighted the being vulnerable piece. I think that’s critical as well. Thank you for emphasizing that.
Clare: I’m going to pick up on that and ask you all to be vulnerable here and share with readers something personal about how you manage the growing demands of this new leadership role.
Birgit: I take it you’re not asking for fluff, here.
Clare: No. I don’t want the fluff. I want the real stuff.
Birgit: Well, I can speak to that as the AFP’s global board chair, because I’m the first woman of color to serve in this role. I’m the shiny penny. And technically, I’m the highest-ranking person at AFP because the CEO currently reports to me. And I get invited to chapters all over the world, from Newfoundland to Mexico to London. I traveled 143,000 miles last year.
On one of those trips, I met the award-winning Iraqi-American activist Zainab Saldi, who is the co-founder of Women for Women International. She helps lift up women in war-torn regions with economic, political, legal, and other resources. She was a keynote speaker at AFP’s international conference, and afterwards I asked her: ‘Being a leader is draining, because people need to take from you. And you pour yourself out to give, to encourage, to motivate, to solve problems. So much is expected of you. As much as it’s rewarding, it can be very, very draining. How do you manage it?’
She said: ‘You politely excuse yourself. You have earned the right to back away, and move away from everything that drains you, even your donors.’
This resonated with me because at one point I had become good friends with a multi-million donor, and she would call me on my personal cell phone. I would be on a call with her for an hour and it would be exhausting, but I didn’t want to say no. Not just because of the level of her giving but because I genuinely liked her and wanted to give her my time.
Zainab told me: ‘You go outside and take a deep breath. You take it in, and you breathe, and you insist on that space, and you will be surprised at how it fills you up… And drink lots of water.’
So, I do. And I’ll finish by saying that I own a house in southwest Michigan, and I take my space and go to Lake Michigan. I was just there two weeks ago, watching the amazing sunsets on Lake Michigan. It could almost make me cry now. It fills my soul, and that’s where I fill up as a leader. Just going off by myself, and taking it in, and breathing, and creating those boundaries of that space. It means everything to me.
Clare: Birgit, that’s beautiful.
Adam: I love this question, and Birgit, that was awesome. I appreciate you sharing all that. These are lonely jobs. Leadership roles are lonely roles. We could have a whole hour just dedicated this topic. So, I’ll try to be concise here.
There was a dean I worked for, whose daughter called him about nine months after she graduated college and got a job. She said, ‘Dad, I’m exhausted. I get up at 6 am every day. Work long hours. I collapse, exhausted at the end of the day. And I get up and do it all over again. You’ve been doing this for 30 years and have all this responsibility, and all these people who need you. How do you get through the day?’
He told her, ‘When I wake up in the morning, all I think about is getting to breakfast. After breakfast, all I think about is getting lunch. After lunch, all I think about is getting to dinner. After dinner, all I think about is getting to bed.’
There’s something poetic about that. We’re always getting pulled in so many different directions at once, and it becomes overwhelming if you think about the totality of all the things we need to do. But ultimately, it boils down to, ‘What are the five things that I’m going to do between now and lunch. And what can I get done before dinner?’ It’s almost meditative. It helps you just be present at each moment.
Beyond that, we all need the discipline to set time for ourselves, for exercise, for sleep. You need to be well rested, and well fed, and healthy, and have your personal time and your family time to be able to handle the pressures and the responsibility. I’m a big believer of that. I model that and I encourage my teams and empower my team to prioritize their own lives in that way. And so, I find that critical to getting it all done.
Clare: John, do you want to bring us to a conclusion on this topic?
John: I’m going to be a bit vulnerable here and share one of the toughest lessons I had to learn in my life. Before I lost my mom in 2019, I was at Morehouse School of Medicine trying very hard to impress my new boss, Dr. Rice. I had lots of projects on my plate, and I was raising a lot of money. And at one point, my stepfather fell ill. My mom called me from the emergency room and told me he was admitted with sepsis, and she had forgotten her emergency ‘go-bag’ that she kept ready for such emergencies. She asked if I could I bring it to her.
I said, ‘Listen, Mom, I can. But I’ve got a big meeting that I cannot miss. I’ve got to present my best.’ Mind you, my mother was the reason I got the job, because she was at a sorority meeting with Dr. Rice and told her what a great fundraiser I was.
When I arrived, I sat in the hospital parking lot trying to reach her. But she was busy with the nurses and then couldn’t find her way to the right parking lot. By the time we connected, I was enraged and cursing her up and down, which is out of order, especially for a Black man to treat his mother that way. Then, by the time I made it back to work, my meeting had been cancelled. Right there, I made a commitment to myself—and I’ve done a lot of therapy to heal that wound—that I would never again allow a job to cause that kind of harm in my life and to my relationships.
We have to remember that for us to be good leaders, and for us to create the necessary endurance, not just for ourselves, but for our teams, we have to rely on three things. We have to absorb stress, because that’s the only way you can protect your team. We have to manage chaos, because there’s always going to be chaos. And we have to give hope.
And what I love so much about Clare’s article is all of those elements exemplify that, right? All the elements that are discussed here—good leadership requires all of it, the vision, the entrepreneurship, the connectedness and trust. But most of all endurance, and an ability to step away and refuse to be overwhelmed, so we can recharge and come back to the board, our presidents, and our colleagues with conviction and hope: ‘We’re doing a good thing here. Remember the mission. Things are going to work out.’
And that’s been the way that I’ve handled the stress of leadership. I’ve just refused to go back to how I did my mom on that terrible day. I’m sure that wherever she is, she forgives me, even if I’m still working on forgiving me.
Birgit: Thank you for sharing that and being so vulnerable.
Adam: It’s time to forgive yourself, John.
Clare: Thank you, John. That’s a beautiful way to bring it all together. We do need to make a conscious effort to make space for our own vulnerability, and to recharge ourselves, so that we can be the kind of leaders our organizations need us to be. So, as we come to the end of our time together, I want to thank you all, so much. This has been so enlightening and helpful. We can’t overstate how much leadership matters, and the importance of modeling leadership for this new generation. Because at some point we will pass the baton to them, and I’ve heard so many beautiful threads here on that topic—you all are great examples of wonderful philanthropic leaders. Thank you.
NEXT UP on November 19th: An in-depth article from ALG’s Tom Herbert on how demographic shifts are impacting philanthropy—and the issues senior advancement professionals need to think about as they build, structure, and lead their teams.
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