Welcome to Fundraising Hell: When Relations With Colleagues Turn Toxic

She was the director of the annual fund at a small Midwestern college. He was director of planned gifts.

What should have have been a productive professional relationship soured into a bitter, on-the-job rivalry that eventually prompted the annual fund director to resign.

The annual fund director—who asked that her name be withheld in order to speak freely about a tough professional issue—said that the planned giving director refused to collaborate with his colleagues and had no fundraising training.

But that didn’t stop him from pushing for a big raise. “He told our boss he had another offer, which was untrue,” she said.