Fundamental Flaw in Nonprofit Fundraising?
 

"A new national survey of nonprofit executives suggests it isn’t just the uncertain economy that’s making it hard for charities—including arts and culture groups—to meet their fundraising goals. The research says there’s something fundamentally amiss with the way many of them go about courting donors.

'This study reveals that many nonprofit organizations are stuck in a vicious cycle that threatens their ability to raise the resources they need to succeed,' begins the 36-page report commissioned by the Evelyn and Walter Haas Jr. Fund and conducted by CompassPoint, a San Francisco-based organization that provides management advice to nonprofits.

Dubbed Underdeveloped: A National Study of Challenges Facing Nonprofit Fundraising, the study says it’s the first systematic attempt to explore how chief fundraisers for nonprofits view their jobs—and how that dovetails or clashes with the expectations of the chief executives they work for.

Arts, culture, and humanities accounted for 11% of the 1,852 head fundraisers and 870 chief executives who responded to the 2012 survey, making it the second-largest sector. Human services was the largest sector, at 22%.

A key finding is that half the chief fundraisers, or 'development directors' as they're known in the nonprofit world, expect to leave their current jobs within two years due to an assortment of pressures, including a frequent feeling that they’re out on a limb because they're expected to produce results without having enough backup from bosses and boards that haven’t managed to put effective, systematic fundraising plans and approaches in place.

Only 58% of the development directors rated their organizations’ fundraising as 'effective' or 'very effective,' compared with 83% of the chief executives, and nearly a third of the fundraisers said they’d been given 'unrealistic' goals. Their average annual pay ranged from $49,141 at organizations with budgets under $1 million to $100,127 when budgets exceeded $10 million."

Los Angeles Times Culture Monsters blog 01/22/2013