Critical Elements of a Major-Gifts Officer Job Description

Notice how simple and to the point this is. I have seen job descriptions where this list is 15 to 25 items!! Made me tired just reading it. Crazy. I asked the person why they had to have so many. "Because HR requires it!" Whew — get rid of the HR department. This is nuts.

Accountability — performance will be measured by

OK, this is the accountability section. It is important to note that this section mirrors the responsibility section. Here's why. For everything we ask you to do we are going to tell you how we will measure you in that area. Makes sense, doesn't it? Then why don't more folks do it? Especially when MGOs are wondering how they will be evaluated? So here are what the mirror points read like:

1. Ability to qualify caseload donors that represent the highest giving potential for the organization.
2. Ability to create reasonable financial goals for each donor, which is based on the donor's giving and the potential.
3. Ability to create a personal contact and ask plan that takes into account the individual donor's interest, motivations, giving patterns and ask preferences, for each donor on his or her caseload, in a timely and cost-effective manner, and retains and upgrades donors.
4. Ability to secure project and organization information and create and write effective offers, proposals and asks. Ability to secure information that can be sent back to donors to report on how their money was used.
5. Ability to create timely reports that reflect caseload and MGO performance.
6. Ability to manage people, process, deadlines and budget while adhering to the policies and procedures of the organization and ability to get along with peers, subordinates and management and maintain a positive and constructive attitude while solving problems. Ability to protect the mission, goals and values of the organization. (Sorry, this one is a little wordy, but you can see there are important values in here.)