Major-Gifts Officers: Do You Have a Confidant?

Recently, I was driving to dinner with a client when she remarked, "You know, Jeff, I wouldn't be able to survive without Mary helping me with my caseload. She knows my donors, she knows me and without her I wouldn't be as effective. I really value her knowledge and her help."

I thought to myself, "How refreshing to hear this." Here is a successful manager of a whole host of major-gifts officers (MGOs) with her own caseload to boot, and here she is telling me that without Mary she could not be effective. Mary happens to work in donor relations and helps this particular nonprofit's MGOs with stewarding their donors, providing ideas to create a better relationship with them.

Yes, I realize having someone in Mary's position would be an absolute luxury for you. But as I talked with my client more, what I was really hearing was how important it is to have someone help in your work, who really knows and understands your work style and how beneficial it is to have someone to bounce ideas off of.

These two have bonded and formed a great, mutually beneficial relationship.

I find this rare in our industry. Quite frankly, MGOs often tend to be solo players. Some of that is just the way the job is configured, with a dose of competition built in.

While it is rare, Richard and I have found some of the best MGOs and managers are ones who collaborate, who go out of their way to seek counsel and who have a real confidant at work.

I remember years ago reading in a management book about traits of effective people in their work. One of the questions they asked, which I thought was odd at first, was, "Do you have a best friend at work?" What they were getting at is do you have someone at work whom you can share who you really are with? It was found that people who do have a "best friend" or confidant at work tend to be more successful and happier than those who don't.