How To Evaluate Your Development Officer

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Ultimately, we should be judged on the amount, quality and forward movement of the relationships we create for our institution. Great relationships lead to great gifts.

Perhaps you read my most recent article "The Crisis of Development Officer Short Tenures: Common Mistakes and Solutions" or perhaps you didn't.
That article seems to have hit a strong undercurrent among Development Officers. Its something that isn’t talked about but commonly experienced. That one major cause of Development Officer Short Tenures is that we are often evaluated by people who aren’t in our profession and don’t understand our work.
One of the most common requests I received from this article was to have a more detailed description of how a development officer should be evaluated, especially now that I have detailed how they shouldn’t.
So here is a checklist of the key points I think that make for an effective and meaningful evaluation. This isn’t the final word on this subject of course and every organization has different factors in evaluation. I write this especially for one situation. When non development professionals are evaluating development officers. If you’re an ED, Board Member, CEO and you don’t know as much as you’d like about Development and are doing the evaluation for a Development Officer, then this is written for you.
Let’s of course put it out there that we Development Officers are there to raise money. Yes, we need to be evaluated by how much money we raise, but in the right context and that’s not the only factor we should be judged by.
Ultimately, we should be judged on the amount, quality and forward movement of the relationships we create for our institution. Great relationships lead to great gifts.

1. Understand the Unique Challenges of Fundraising at your Institution

There are all types of fundraising. Fundraising for well-established institutions with well cultivated donor bases, fundraising for new causes that are hard to explain with few donors, fundraising for institutions with past Board conflicts or financial issues.  Keep the context in mind when judging a Development Officer’s performance. What issues did they have to deal with? Having that honesty about your institution is often hard to come by. Too often development officers aren’t supported by Board’s, work for departments that are under staffed or have some sort of history that harms fundraising. So judge your fundraising staff given the proper context. Be honest with yourselves about the hurdles they face in this work that is unique to your institution.

2.Know your Cycle

One of the most common mistakes is the over emphasis on solicitation. So the first step is to actually know there is much more to fundraising than asking for money. Someone a lot smarter than me years categorized fundraising into something commonly known as the “Cycle of Fundraising”.  Simply that there are 5 steps to fundraising. Identification, Qualification, Cultivation, Solicitation and Stewardship.

When you understand what’s being done with each prospect/individual in this process you will better understand the work. For example, when it comes to Qualification you need to get an initial appointment and have a face to face conversation with that prospect. Now think about what it takes to get that appointment with a sought after wealthy, successful philanthropist? These are busy people, who are often hesitant to talk to fundraisers. With creative approaches, email, phone calls it can take days or 1 year to get an appointment, if you get one.  One doesn’t just call every prospect and they pick up the phone on the first ring and set an appointment that’s in a week! Often the larger the prospect the more difficult they are to engage.

So here is how to measure and think about each step of the cycle.

Identification:
Can your development officer work with Prospect Research (whichever form it comes in) to identify key prospects? Do you have a strong list of likely prospects to reach? Based on what data? Of course many portfolios of development officers have established donors that need to be cared for so you need to find the right amount of prospects for every portfolio and situation. You can judge the work on the established donor in the Stewardship part of the cycle.
Qualification:
How many qualification meetings did the Development Officer engage in a time period? How does she/he qualify a prospect? What questions do they use? I am talking about live face to face meetings. Don’t let someone pass off a phone call as a qualification. When you work with your Development Officer to set this goal it will be more realistic.
Cultivation:
How many prospects are in cultivation? Do you see movement from Identification and Qualification, into Cultivation? Do you see people moving from Cultivation to Solicitation?
How creative, innovative and robust is the cultivation going on? Are they holding great events? Are many meetings happening with the Dean, President etc.? Are tours happening full of prospects?
Solicitation:
Go with your Development Officer on a solicitation if you can. Ask them questions after the meeting. What’s the ratio of their solicitations? Did they ask 35 times last year and get 29 “Yes”? That is pretty good of course.  Don’t forget to consider context. Are they asking for something that is poorly thought out, a tough ask? That will bring their ratio down.
Stewardship:
Review your Development Officer’s stewardship moves with key donors. How often do they engage donors? Is it creative? Any indications the donors are happy and feeling great or the opposite?

3.Give them realistic goals in the first place and a real job

When I say “real job” I mean a job where they have a realistic amount of work. When you see institutions where there is a single Development Officer and she/he has duties heaped on them it’s worrisome.  Running the Annual Mailings, Major Gifts Program, Corporate Solicitations, Writing Grants, Planned Giving, the two Annual Gala’s maybe too much for one person to do with any depth. So work with them to focus on maximum revenue and maximum future growth. Remember us Development Officers don’t want to tell you “no” or “I can’t do that”.  So have an open safe conversation where priorities are laid out and it’s realistic given a 40 hour work week

4.Know their Relationships

Talk with your Development Director about what type of relationships they are building with their prospects and donors. Look for depth, trust and engagement.  Is your Development Officer meeting with this new mega wealthy prospect regularly? Did he invite her to his home? Is progress happening? Did they have in depth conversations about his philanthropy? That’s great. Eventually that will be a good gift. Your Development Director sometimes needs to build trust. It’s not always, “Hi nice to meet you, write me a check”.

There is also the opposite. I knew an institution once where the Development Officers were too timid and had “conversations” with their donors during intermissions in the theatre or at cocktail parties. They thought it was “too aggressive” to go to their home or office. They had failed cultivations, failed solicitations because they had shallow relationships with their donors. They didn’t have those type of face to face conversations that are vital to philanthropy.

5.Look for Innovation and Creativity

Our profession is full of obstacles and barriers to philanthropy. How does your Development Officer deal with adversity? Is she/he innovative, creative and comes up with neat new approaches? Do they design events well? Do they design materials well?
I helped counsel a CEO of a large regional health nonprofit. He wanted to know if his Chief Development Officer was actually successful. I was to create a fair evaluation process and train the CDO as well. The CEO seemed fair and explained all of the issues in staffing and board conflicts the health system had been through in the last year.  What I found was the CDO creatively working around all of these damaging changes and focusing donors on the success the health system had seen in the past year. He built good PR, held celebratory events, dealt head on with donors who had concerns. He even increased giving slightly in a time when most organizations would have taken a bad financial hit.

6.Try Professional Development First

Ok let’s say we see some shortcomings in your Development Officer. What next? Are these issues that are based on a lack of experience? Does she/he seem like someone who could learn? Do they have the right attitude to learn? If so, then instead of firing someone consider offering directed and specific Professional Development. A good place to work would normally allow Development staff to participate in Professional Development anyway.

There are lots of options in almost any place nationally, live or online. There are many consultants who can coach and consult to help an inexperienced Development Officers learn our profession on the job.

If this sounds expensive weigh this against the cost of lost relationships, time without a Development Officer and Search Consultants.

I have been hired to coach new Development Officers and it’s always been very fruitful. They just need some benefits of experience; some place safe to ask dumb questions. They don’t come with 30 years of experience and experience matters. There are a hundred ways to mess up a philanthropic relationship with a top prospect. Coaching can help them avoid most of those mistakes.

There are also great conferences, online trainings at AFP, AFP Chapters, APRA, CASE and others. Make it safe for your Development Officers to attend conferences and seek professional development, it’s a good investment.

7.Show your Evaluation to Another Development Officer

One last neat little trick is to put your evaluation parameters down on paper and share it with other development officers. Preferably people that live far away and will never meet or know your own Development Officer. Ask for their input and give them the context in which your Development Officer is fundraising. They might spot a mistake or something that might not be fair. If you know a Development Consultant ask them too.

Conclusion

This article is for those of you who don’t have development experience to evaluate your Development Officers.  Beware of Board Members or volunteers who feel like they have enough Development experience to judge your Development Officer. There is a very different experience for volunteers and staff. Even people with extensive volunteer fundraising experience are commonly unaware of all that goes on behind the scenes, and what it takes to make things happen. Also there are lots of people who think fundraising for their child’s school is enough experience to judge someone running a complex Development department of 8 staff raising $30 million a year.  It’s just not the same.
Its simple learn about the work before you judge it. A lot of people hate fundraising, don’t like to talk about it let alone learn about it. If your one of those people who avoid fundraising like dental surgery, then ask yourself if it’s time you change that attitude?
I hope this article has been helpful. Finally there is the morale factor of a great evaluation. When you evaluate us well we really appreciate it and perhaps we can learn from it and grow.

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 A lot of people hate fundraising, don’t like to talk about it let alone learn about it. If your one of those people who avoid fundraising like dental surgery, then ask yourself if it’s time you change that attitude?

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