The world of fundraising, including the entire advancement profession, has gone through significant changes over the past several decades, and we have every reason to believe that such changes will continue, perhaps even accelerate.
The trends are many, and their impacts are broad: demographic changes in the donor base; an increasing concentration of wealth, which brings increased competition among nonprofits for potentially fewer but larger gifts; massive transfers of wealth to a new generation of donors; a shrinking of available public dollars; the increasingly strategic role that fundraising plays in supporting nonprofits’ operations; changes in how we define “workplace;” and the continued evolution of technology and its many applications to advancement work; to name just a few.
At Aspen Leadership Group, we believe that our work—preparing, placing, and supporting advancement leaders, and talking to hundreds of advancement professionals every single week—gives us a unique perspective on how these trends are impacting the profession and the organizations relying on advancement teams for critical financial support. As former advancement professionals ourselves, ALG’s senior leadership team members also bring decades of hands-on experience in the field, a perspective that helps us take a thoughtful, strategic approach to helping our clients add the right talent, at the right time, for the right purpose.
This new effort aims to leverage the knowledge gained through our peer-to-peer approach, illuminating and exploring the trends having the biggest impact on fundraising leaders, their teams, and their organizations.
While the primary benefit of this series may be for hiring managers tasked with building advancement teams, and for candidates for leadership roles, we hope that it will appeal to anyone connected to the philanthropic mission: whether a CDO, CEO, CFO, COO, Board member, frontline fundraiser, or volunteer, or a Human Resources executive involved in the hiring decision, or a Marketing professional supporting the advancement shop.
New Leadership Challenges in a Changing World
The reality for nonprofits is that, of all their available revenue streams, philanthropy is usually the only one with an ability to grow beyond the rate of inflation in a sustained way—i.e., other revenue sources like ticket prices, tuition, patient fees, etc.—face caps on their potential growth rate. Philanthropy, however, most often does not. Which makes fundraising a financial resource with ever-more strategic importance. This reality has caused an evolution in the advancement profession:
- advancement work must be both more effective and more efficient;
- CDOs have more strategic responsibilities, and they need to delegate more operational responsibilities;
- the CDO’s partnership with all members of the C-suite is more important than ever;
- advancement leaders must have a clear understanding of how the financial contribution of philanthropy integrates with their organizations’ short- and long-term operational needs;
- almost every internal constituent and many external constituents expect a strong relationship with advancement leaders.
The list of changes is long, and potentially getting longer as the evolution of our profession continues.
We also need to be frank that our profession has not always adequately prepared our leaders for such changes, even as their careers grow and flourish. Often, excellent fundraisers are promoted into management positions without the right support and coaching—a weakness that must be corrected if tomorrow’s advancement leaders are to be capable of delivering what their organizations require—especially as the CDO role evolves to include many responsibilities beyond fundraising.
Over the next 12 months, we will be exploring all of these topics, and more. We hope to publish every two weeks: first an article by a senior ALG search consultant, followed two weeks later by a roundtable panel of advancement leaders. As part of our previous series, The Great Rethink, readers told us that they greatly appreciated the frank discussion with senior advancement professionals across many nonprofit sectors, as well as the practical strategies for managing key trends and leveraging those trends to get the most strategic benefit from their fundraising programs. In the final months of the new series, we will do deep dives into the impacts on specific nonprofit sectors: Arts & Culture, Higher Education, Healthcare, and then a special focus on smaller nonprofits.
It promises to be an exciting, illuminating series, and we hope that it not only provides inspiration, but also delivers useful tools and guidance for leveraging these trends for the highest and best use of your organization’s fundraising resources.
Our aim is to help you and your organization maximize the performance and job satisfaction of your team and the impact of your program. As always, we look forward to engaging with you directly and hearing your thoughts as we explore these important topics together.
Best wishes,
Ron Schiller
Contributing author:
Ron Schiller, Founding Partner and Senior Consultant, Aspen Leadership Group
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NEXT UP on September 24th : Aspen Leadership Group’s Don Hasseltine outlines the Top 10 Trends shaping the future of philanthropy.
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