Jeffrey David Stauch - Effective Frontline Fundraising: A Guide for Nonprofits, Political Candidates, and Advocacy Groups

My first job as a fundraiser was not glorious. I was working for a for-profit company that contracted with progressive nonprofits that had opted to outsource their fundraising operations. While the job was far from glamorous, it was a great training ground, and I was fortunate to meet many people dedicated to what we called internally the movement, or the left-wing conspiracy.

My first year, I was put in charge of directing the street canvassing office in Boston, in the lead-up to the mid-term US elections. Our client at the time, not surprisingly, was the Democratic National Committee (DNC). I worked six to seven days a week, averaging more than 60 hours a week (and oftentimes pushing 80). Three or four of those days, I was out with my crew, clipboard in hand in a bright blue DNC t-shirt, waving down pedestrians with a smile and a question along the lines of, Do you have a minute for the Democrats? or Have a second to talk about the mid-terms?

The work was grueling, and there were certainly moments when I questioned what I was doing. Back at the office, the saying went: The hours are long, and the work is thankless, but at least the pay sucks.

One of the first lessons I learned, direct from the mouth of one of the vice presidents of the company, let's call him Stan, during our week of intense training in Newton, Massachusetts, was there's no such thing as luck. It was an interesting thought, and just counterintuitive enough to make all the young, starry-eyed liberals in the room pause for a second to internalize what exactly that meant.

Stan's point was that becoming an effective fundraiser is about developing a skill set, just as in any other job. His conviction proved true first in my job canvassing on the streets of Boston, then down the hall as I grew the call center of the canvassing company's sister organization, and now, at a small college in New England, soliciting six- and seven-figure gifts and coordinating eight-figure solicitations in collaboration with the college administration.

We often get into fundraising by accident; that was certainly the case for me. I was fresh out of graduate school, and I took the first job I was offered. Despite the long hours and lackluster paycheck, I was fortunate to have a solid training program and great supervisors who were goal driven and checked in weekly on how my staff was doing (or more frequently if performance was down). In most of the nonprofit world, this type of diligence and attention to quantitative data, at least with respect to the development shop, is rare.

Granted, this organization was a for-profit, whose sole duty was to raise money for nonprofits. The fact that nonprofits are outsourcing, however, is a sign that they aren't terribly good at doing the development work themselves. This can bring with it a number of problems, especially as an organization first turns toward making its fundraising department a professional shop. Many clients that this company brought on were quite large: the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the Sierra Club, Save the Children, the Democratic National Committee. All of these organizations were able to make that investment to outsource significant components of their development operations to a third party.

Smaller, younger nonprofits do not have that luxury. First, you might not have the money to spend to pay the vendor. Second, and more important, it is unlikely that you would be taken on as a client. The company I worked for operates on a profit motive, so it wants to concentrate on clients that already have name recognition, nonprofits readily recognizable to the average passerby on the street as canvassers like me tried day after day to flag someone down. Name recognition matters. In fact, the company I used to work for is now turning away business. So instead, young, protean nonprofits are left to their own devices when it comes to fundraising.