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 the top donor, organizational, talent management, and technology trends impacting philanthropy and the advancement profession. It features three leaders with decades of experience across multiple sectors of philanthropy:
Panelist: Marlah Bonner is Vice President of Development for the League of American Orchestras. She began her career in the corporate sector, and her lifelong passion for arts and education led her to a career in the nonprofit sector. Marlah has extensive experience leading all areas of philanthropy, strategic planning, and business development. Prior to joining The League, she held senior leadership roles in nonprofit organizations in higher education, venture philanthropy, and arts and culture, including the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where she served as Associate Dean for Advancement, the University of Delaware where she served in the Office of the Provost as Director of Development for Strategic Initiatives, and Philadelphia School Partnership as Senior Director of External Affairs.
Panelist: Kelly Kerner is the President and Chief Philanthropy Officer of the Piedmont Healthcare Foundation. In his role, Kelly leads and coordinates efforts among all philanthropic programs at Piedmont and positions philanthropy as an important and functional part of its culture. Kelly serves as a member of the Piedmont Leadership Team, providing counsel to System Leaders and Foundation Leads regarding the system’s vision, strategic plans, and philanthropy operations. Previously, he served as vice president for development and alumni relations and as executive director of the University of Georgia Foundation. At UGA, he worked with the university president to set the university’s philanthropic objectives for increasing the endowment and annual support and strengthening relationships with the university’s top donor prospects. He also served as the primary contact with the university’s board of trustees and oversaw a team of more than 250 development/alumni relations professionals and support staff. Before joining UGA, Kerner served in various roles in development offices at small colleges in the Northeast.
Panelist: Joshua R. Newton is senior vice president for advancement and alumni engagement at Emory University, with responsibility for the development and implementation of the university’s $4 billion philanthropic campaign. He also plays an important role in furthering Emory’s relationships in the Atlanta community as well as engaging nationally and internationally on behalf of the university. Previously he served as president and CEO of the University of Connecticut Foundation, where he presided over the five most successful fundraising years in the foundation’s history. In a previous tenure with Emory’s Development and Alumni Relations division, the university successfully completed Campaign Emory, a seven-year, $1.69 billion effort.
Moderator: Over his 25-year career in advancement, Don Hasseltine has held leadership positions at five colleges and universities. Most recently, he served as the Vice President for Development at Brown University where he was instrumental in launching their historic $3 billion campaign. Before Brown, Don served as Vice President for Advancement at Carleton, Dickinson, and Colby-Sawyer. He orchestrated two successful campaigns, and he led strategic planning processes at each institution. Earlier in his career, he served as Director of Annual Giving at both Georgetown University and the University of Virginia. Don specializes in organizational development for nonprofits with particular expertise in philanthropy, fundraising, and leadership. Don has served as a CASE Circle of Excellence Judge, led the CASE conference on capital campaigns, and served on the Commission of Philanthropy. He also writes a popular LinkedIn article series called “Coach’s Corner” focusing on leadership and management issues in advancement.
Don: Let me thank you all for taking the time to do this. At Aspen Leadership Group, part of our commitment to the profession is bringing forward the voices of experts who are out there doing this good work. All of you have experienced many changes and transitions over the course of your careers, and we’ll cover several key areas, but first I want to start with your reflections on donor trends, and how they are affecting your organizations and your advancement shops.
Kelly: One key trend that we’re having to navigate is that donors are getting very specific about where they want to put their philanthropic dollars. Increasingly, we are finding that we have to work in a kind of reactionary mode, side-by-side with working on the institution’s overall strategic plan.
For example, we had a patient who had a very positive experience at the hospital from a healthcare standpoint, but we couldn’t find a wheelchair to put them in when it came time for discharge. So, they wanted to fund the acquisition of more wheelchairs. Now, if I were to ask the physician leadership, they would say that’s not a top priority. But in talking to the hospital administration, they actually could find a use for such a donation. So, we were able to match the donation with a need, and give the donor satisfaction that they did some good.
But again, this was not a path that I would have gone down with this particular prospect. So, it’s a very interesting conversation where you have to listen carefully and do your best to assent to the desires of the donor, but also be very realistic about what can be accomplished with the resources that they want to provide and where it fits within the large mandate for the philanthropy program.
Josh: I’d pick up where Kelly left off and say that general fund dollars evaporated long ago. Donor directed gifts have become the norm. People want to put their gifts to something that they tend to want to connect to. And donors today can be highly reactive to the social and political climate. One wrong move by an administrator or faculty member, or even part of the student body, and we could get a flood of emails swearing off donating to Emory for any number of reasons.
What I’ve been talking about for eight or ten years now is the declining alumni participation rates within university settings. As I hit my six-year mark this month, and after investing tons of staff and resources into shifting our alumni culture, as we end the seventh year of an eight-year campaign, alumni giving represents just 11% of our campaign total. That’s way up from where we started, but still only half of what our peer group generates. So, we have to ask: At what point does 500 more $50 donors provide a pipeline of institutional support for the long term?
We have spent years shifting our alumni culture from what was 28,000 engaged alums to 50,000+ engaged alums on an annual basis, and yet, on the bottom line, I’m still getting about half my annual philanthropy from about a dozen large gifts. It really is about 50 out of every 500 alumni donors who have major gift capacity long term. So, the key for us is to figure out how to identify those with major gift capacity early enough to know what’s going to drive our pipeline.
Marlah: We are finding that we cannot be reactive in terms of what donors and funders want to support if it does not fit within our priorities—as a professional association with a specific set of priorities for the field, we are just not in a position to react this way. It becomes increasingly more important for us to develop a very clear and concise case that says: ‘This is the work that needs to happen, and this is why.’
I would also add that individual donors are also becoming increasingly interested in data as it relates to impact. I have donors asking some very nitty-gritty questions and they are becoming much more sophisticated in how they approach their philanthropy. You have to be a trusted partner to donors—helping them achieve their philanthropic goals over time. This is especially true when working with high-net-worth donors—you must be very thoughtful and intentional about communicating impact.
We are also being impacted by intergenerational wealth transfer. We’ve seen a wave of donors transferring their family foundation–getting their children involved, which adds a new layer for us to navigate. As an example, one of our major funders who we worked for many years shared that their children would now be leading the foundation and that the funding priorities were going to be shifting to other nonprofits. But on the flip side, the work we’re doing in equity, diversity, and inclusion has opened doors to new donors who are passing their wealth to children of the millennial wave, who are very much interested in what we’re doing in that space.
So, wealth transfer definitely creates challenges, but also opportunities, especially as it relates to engaging our Board. We have started to work more closely with our Board in trying to open doors to a number of foundations, and engage with foundation decision-makers on our behalf. We have seen tremendous shifts in funder priorities in arts and cultural space, with and increasing number of organizations competing for limited dollars. Having a direct connection to funders through your board and other partners is tremendously helpful, and ever critical.
Don: Thank you. There are a few themes in there that I want to echo back. One is the continuing demand of prospects and donors towards things that are important to them, but do not necessarily match the key priorities of the institution. So, more agency with our donors, and the reactionary posture it creates for our teams. We’re all seeing the narrowing of the pyramid, which is now more like 95/5 rather than 80/20, and how that affects the way we’re structured and spend our time. So, let’s go deeper on that topic and move to organizational trends. How are you all thinking about your organizations based on what’s happening out there in the marketplace?
Josh: I think we’ve got to pay more attention to our structures, and how they flow, and which activities actually are driving the level of prospects that are going to drive our major and principal gift operations. You talk about the pyramid narrowing to 95/5. Sometimes I think it’s more like 98/2. We’ve got a great, strong principal-gifts program, but we don’t yet have a pipeline and a succession plan for how we’re going to mature this operation, and grow it by 40%+ over the next few years.
The word I used when I got here was elevate—that we had to elevate our programs. Now, I’m shifting my word to intentionality. I believe that in everything we do, there has to be greater intentionality to our work and to how we staff out our organizations.
If you do a peer analysis, we are significantly overstaffed in alumni engagement officers, and in direct marketing, and what would be considered traditional annual giving activity. So, we’re beginning to shift our model. We’re going to scale back on the alumni engagement piece, shut down our call center, and scale back on our direct marketing efforts and go more digital. And I’m going to create what I would consider non-traditional leadership annual giving officers, who will work with our portfolio optimization team to look at annual donors with major gift capacity, and major gift capacity donors who aren’t currently engaging—all in an effort to actually drive pipeline for our major-gifts operation. As opposed to funding a call center or a leadership annual giving program that’s generating a lot of small gifts without a lot of growth potential.
I am now in a position of agreeing with our President, who says, “I don’t need 500 more $50 donors—I need 100 more $50 donors who have major gift capacity.” We have to be more targeted in how we engage with our constituent base. Engage broadly, across the alumni and grateful patient communities, but within that engagement, we have got to have more individualized follow-up for the right people.
Marlah: The word ‘intentionality’ resonates with the changes we have been making since COVID, which forced some significant shifts and opportunities within our organization. Shortly after the pandemic, we decided to expand our fundraising operation. The work-from-home revolution was in full-swing and one of our first new hires was a talented senior development professional based in the Midwest, which is inclusive of several regions that are critical for us. We are based in New York, and previously wouldn’t have considered candidates outside our region. It was a revelation to be able to hire solely on talent without any consideration for geographic location, and allowed us to have a much wider talent pool from which to recruit. Following that hire, we hired additional development staff from across the country, including Wisconsin and Texas. The rationale was that not only were we getting top fundraising talent, but they were located in some of our top markets—which in fundraising is a huge advantage. So, the shift for the League was that we became an New York-headquartered organization with national reach—which makes perfect sense as a national organization.
The second trend that forced us to adapt, and act with more intentionality, was that a lot of foundations providing significant funding for us began to shift their focus. So, we had to adapt and pivot, and expand our efforts in individual giving. With boots on the ground across the country we have much more of an opportunity to expand individual giving via face-to-face engagement with donors and donor prospects. And to support that, we’ve built a more comprehensive program with activity metrics and goals and an engagement model that is laser-focused on getting out in front of donors. One of my mantras has always been: donors are not inside your office, we have to go to them. While it’s trickier for us to get face-to-face with donor prospects—we are trying to fundraise alongside the very organizations we serve—we still need to maximize our engagement and build our pipeline on the individual side, which is where the key growth opportunity is now for the League.
Kelly: Intentionality is a good word for me because right now we’re in the process of analyzing everything we’re doing and trying to determine where we want to put our energy, and where we expect our ROI. Echoing a little bit of what Josh said, our annual giving is probably less than 11%, maybe in the high single digits. But for me, what’s lacking in the work that we’re doing is we don’t have the volume of fundraisers that we need to put in front of the volume of constituents that we have.
We’re trying to build a more robust, face-to-face fundraising model that’s supported by the annual giving program, which is a very different animal on the healthcare side, but it’s part of what we do and definitely helps build a pipeline and surface some people we might not have otherwise seen. So, we’ve got one major initiative to grow this face-to-face fundraising team—with the appropriate levels and titles for major gifts, principal gifts, foundations and corporate gifts, etc. But in order to do that, we’ll also need a more robust research capability. So, we’re looking at that as an area that we want to build up, and whether there are some technologies we can bring to bear to give us a faster access to new names and prospects. If all that works, then we create a bigger fundraising engine that’s going to require bigger back-office team.
For now, however, we’re going in steps and making the decision to stretch ourselves on the back-office as we quickly fill slots for face-to-face fundraisers. Because, despite the hoopla about new tech tools, I still believe this business is very much about face-to-face interactions. Particularly in healthcare, the whole business model is human-to-human contact. So, shouldn’t our interactions with our prospects be that way? That’s the direction we’re going. We’re trying to build a larger team, starting on the fundraising side of it and then building behind it as that fundraising team gets up and running.
Don: That seems like a good segue to talk about talent management challenges. With all this movement and change in the fundraising organizations, we’ve probably seeing changes in the type of talent being recruited, the distribution of that talent, the skill sets, and then we still need to retain and build an organization that is inspiring and engaging to that team. It sounds like a tall task, so I’ll let you experts talk about what that might look like in the future.
Marlah: I would say that, at a very high level, as a profession we need to be more creative and not as cookie cutter about what we’re looking for in terms of skills and background.
I hired a fundraiser with no formal fundraising experience, who came very highly recommended by a colleague. During the interview, she had great ideas about how she would approach the job. She adds tremendous value to our program and I think some of the value is in the fact that she has a fresh perspective and is not tied to a specific model from other organizations.
In lieu of experience, if someone has drive, and they’re a go-getter, and they have good ideas and instincts, I’m willing to give that person a chance and do the coaching. I think we need to be a lot more creative and think outside the box as it relates to talent.
Josh: I think that the idea of talent is the right place to start. What’s happening generally in our profession is that we’re so starved for talent that fundraisers can skip from one place to the next, every two or three years, and never really manage a portfolio, or learn how to be a great development officer, or hit their metrics and raise money. They go from assistant to associate to Director, and all of a sudden have 10 years of experience on their resume but no real skills or accomplishments.
And even with that being said, I struggle with losing a person with any level of talent because I know that the pool that I’m going to go pull from to replace them is even more challenging. So, I’ve had to shift to creating internal training programs and trying to coach people up. And so, I’m trying to train them while I have them, and of course, I’ve got them two years and they already want a pay raise or a promotion, or they’re going to leave, right? It’s just a horrible cycle that I think we’re in as a sector.
Part of the solution, as Marlah pointed out, may be to look at candidates without development experience. I think we’re going to come up shorthanded if we keep insisting that every fundraiser has to have a fundraising background. Some of the best people I hired at University of Connecticut had been lobbyists at the state capitol. They weren’t development officers, but they made damn good development officers because were used to hitting the pavement and having hard conversations. I think we have to look for a skill set and not a specific set of experience.
Kelly: I think those comments are spot on, and one of the things we’re doing here is beginning to change the way we write job descriptions, to broaden the scope of acceptable skills and background. Piedmont is a place that sticks very closely to its job description. So, if you haven’t put in there the breadth of experience, if you’ve made it too specific, you can’t hire outside of those specific characteristics.
We’ve hired some folks, a bunch of folks recently, most of them have some level of fundraising experience, some of them have fundraising experience in healthcare. But we just offered a role to someone with no direct fundraising experience, but she’s got just this cornucopia of experiences and skills that if you changed a couple of words, you’d think she was a development person. So, I’m really excited about her because she brings a different perspective into how to do the work.
Overall, I’m back where I was 15 or 20 years ago when I was in my first VP role, in a little town in rural Maine without access to a lot of professional fundraisers. We were hiring people from all different industries, and finding the fit, and then training the skill. There are so many options and opportunities for people in a city like Atlanta to go be in another nonprofit, we are always at risk.
So, how do we create a place where you can bring somebody in, give them some training, some professional development, help them to grow in a job position, give them a clear outline of what a career ladder looks like here, and at the same time create a culture in which they really want to work?
That’s the kind talent management program that makes it hard for people to go someplace else because they’re going to be leaving behind a culture that, hopefully, they love. So, I agree that we have to be more creative in order to build the teams that we need, in order to be as successful as we can be.
Don: So, assuming we’ve got the talent, and our teams are organized the way they need to be, we’ve still got to find a way to increase the capacity of the team and increase the cycle times of our most promising donor relationships. Technology can be a great enabler, empowering the frontline people doing this important work, ultimately leading to better outcomes. Is that a fair way to characterize the technology challenge?
Josh: I have said to my team that technology will bring the biggest transformation to our operation over the next five year period, hands down, and what I mean by that is technology can be more automated and yet still bring more customized, individualized engagement with our major donors.
Technology can help clear off our plates. But I want to be clear: I don’t want donors getting automated pledge reminders or generic email invites. What I want is for my fundraisers to be notified two months out, three months out, that ‘Josh Newton has a pledge due.’ And I want that automated system to prep me for my direct engagement with that donor. I don’t want a machine to take over my engagement with that person. Rather, I want these automation tools to help strengthen my personal engagement. That’s the kind of capability we’re working on.
Kelly: That’s what I worry about with technology, is that when we begin to rely on it too much, we can lose the human touch. If technology can enhance our ability to create more of a human touch in our work, then I’m all for it. But like many institutions, I’m challenged from an IT standpoint in getting new technologies adopted. The level of scrutiny and security around bringing in any new technology here makes the Pentagon pale in comparison. And like many advancement shops, our centralized IT support system is a bit cumbersome for us because we’re not like anything else in the system. But the good news is that we have three people on our team here who are not IT people, but boy are they smart about tech, and they’re helping us to make good decisions about technologies to pursue.
Marlah: Like many smaller shops, we just can’t hire the same way large institutions do, which have dedicated teams of people just responsible for technology. But like Kelly, we have been fortunate to fill that gap by hiring and retaining development staff with skills in tech and digital. So, we’ve been able to uncover new platforms that are giving us more of the information we need to be successful—because we’re very data-driven in the way we fundraise, the way we segment, and the way we build out our annual plan. We all have to be entrepreneurial in our approach—we often have to learn the tech as we go, and I am very reliant on a team that brings different levels of tech savvy to the table. It’s not my area of strength, but I continue to learn and have a super-smart team that goes above and beyond in setting us up for success, in research platforms, data analytics, etc.
Don: That seems like a good place to end—getting our teams set up for success. Thank you for opening up and sharing your experiences and insights. This kind of peer-to-peer sharing is an important part of moving the advancement profession forward, especially as we face tough challenges in a rapidly changing world. Congratulations with all the great work you and your teams are doing. I think readers will benefit greatly from hearing your stories.
NEXT UP on October 22nd: Aspen Leadership Group’s Clare McCully tackles the issue of leadership—how big trends in philanthropy redefining leadership, and what skills and talents will be required for the next generation of leaders in the advancement profession.
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