Leading the Charge

Melia, however, comes down on the other side of that debate.

“I don’t think you can be successful [as a fundraiser] unless you’re passionate about the cause,” he says. “But professionalizing the fundraising staff is important because, you know, people are looking. People care deeply, and they want to know that the dollars are going where you say they’re going. I think it’s important that people are trained. This is a profession, and [WWP has] always treated it that way.

“We want our folks to be professional development folks. We want them to have the credentials necessary to do the job and to be able to work in their world, in that fundraising world,” he adds.

Finally, Melia doesn’t put much stock in traditional efficiency ratings for nonprofits, i.e., watchdog groups like GuideStar, Charity Navigator, the American Institute of Philanthropy and the Better Business Bureau. Relying, instead, on outcomes and the organization’s own measures of success, he says, allows it to do what it needs to without worrying about how many stars it gets. (For the time being, however, that’s not too much of a concern because WWP hasn’t been around long enough to be officially “rated,” though Melia expects three stars when the time comes.)

He says, for example, he’s heard complaints that too much WWP money goes into programs for returning wounded vets rather than directly to the vets themselves. The organization figured out that if it were to do that, each vet it has helped would have received a check for roughly $6,000. And while that seems like a good deal, it would really only be a short-term fix, as opposed to the programs WWP offers to help vets and their families in the long run. Sort of a “give a man a fish …” scenario.

Also, the guidelines for ratings aren’t standardized enough to make it possible to please everyone, Melia says, explaining, “You can chase your tail all day trying to satisfy the different watchdog groups that are out there. We’ve measured what it would mean to us if we met GuideStar’s ratings, and then we’ve measured what it would mean to us if we met Charity Navigator’s ratings and AIP’s ratings. And what we found is if you do well on Charity Navigator, it may bring your score down at AIP. Or if you’ve done well at BBB, it may bring your score down. Because BBB wants you to have more in reserves and AIP would look poorly on that. So it’s really like the cat or dog chasing its tail.”