The Three Legs of a Nonprofit Stool

I could tell he was very frustrated. And he felt misunderstood. To put it plainly, he could not get management to understand that without program information he would not be successful.

The person I was talking to was a very talented major gifts officer (MGO) who had a long track record of success previous to his current assignment. And that success is what had attracted the attention of the CEO who had hired him. But now that it was time to produce, the CEO was blocking the MGO. Not blocking on purpose or with mal intent. No, blocked because of the CEO's ignorance.

Jeff and I see this kind of thing all the time—where there is a lack of understanding about how a nonprofit actually works. Not a week goes by where I don’t hear a story about good, well-educated, smart and professional managers actually blocking the success of fundraising through their behavior. They allow:

• Finance to call the shots without regard for fundraising. In this situation, the bean counters are the ones who decide what the donors want and need, and what the price (ask) will be. There is one situation I am dealing with right now where finance actually comes up with the projects for the MGOs and sets guidelines as to what they can or can’t say to the donor. This is unbelievable and, surprise, it’s not working!
• A situation where no one leads or decides. This is the classic management-by-consensus approach, which never works. I have been in meetings where the leader, although physically present, is nowhere to be seen in the conversation. The troops must duke it out to arrive at mostly bad conclusions. MGOs caught in this situation are encouraged to do the best they can and they try.
• Program folks to rule. This is not too bad of an idea if the program people are donor-centered. Some are. But many aren’t. And the ones that aren’t make it their life goals to protect programs from fundraising! This is so interesting to me. They want to control the very hand that feeds them!
• A self appointed “editor” to make decisions about what works and what doesn’t in major gifts, what can be said and what shouldn’t be said, etc. Usually, this person is attached somehow to an authority figure and, essentially, edits the life out of all communication, written and visual. I dealt with a situation like this just a few weeks ago where the “person calling the shots” was a fourth-tier manager with more opinions than Rush Limbaugh. It was amazing to sit on the sidelines and watch this circus. I don’t know if I was more fascinated by all the opinions emanating from this man’s mouth or the passive behavior of his manager and his manager’s manager sitting in the room. It was all a joke. And suffering through all of it were three MGOs who had to put up with it.