While you were tanning at the beach, you might have missed an interesting series of articles in the Chronicle of Philanthropy. on the theme of “What Sets Great Fundraisers Apart”.

Consider these tantalizing story titles: 9 Ways Charities Can Help Fundraisers Succeed … Young Fundraisers Are Ambitious And Impatient But Need Training … and I’m sure the most tantalizing to Agitator readers — Charities Scramble Over In-Demand Fundraisers.

Sorry, these articles are available to Chron subscribers only.

The latter article indicates it takes a median of six months to fill development jobs. Perhaps you should punch up your resume before serious fundraising resumes in September.

And the Young Fundraisers article talks about — you guessed it — intergenerational tension within many fundraising operations. Have any of that in your shop?! You know the basics. The ‘old’ don’t know anything about technology and the ‘young’ don’t know anything about donors.

As for 9 Ways charities can help fundraisers succeed, I’d be willing to boil it down to one. Go back to the board and get them to invest seriously in growth. For both psychological and financial reasons.

Psychological — what bright, talented, ambitious fundraiser wants to work for an organization that is itself complacent and merely marking time? The best are motivated by the challenge put to them.

Financial — it takes money to make money. If a charity wants to count pennies, put an accountant or the CFO in charge of what you might then only loosely call ‘fundraising’. But if you really want to set your fundraiser free, give them some serious working capital. Consider some of Roger’s urgings on this point (and read the rest of his ‘Barriers to Growth’ series while you’re at it).

So, how to set yourself apart as a fundraiser?

Looking around my ‘self-improvement’ files, I found this free Harvard Business Review article which might be helpful to those not on the Chron subscriber list … 5 Things Digital CMOs Do Better.

Yes, it was written with the suggestion that digital marketers necessarily do certain things better. But on reflection, I thought the points made offer sound guidance for any marketer, or fundraiser …

1. Shift from finding customers to getting found.
   [“Today, customers are inundated by pleas for their attention. As a marketer, the onus is on you to meet these customers on their terms with something of extraordinary value.’]
2. Shelve the commercial pitch in favor of authentic storytelling.
   [“These stories often follow the traditional narrative arc of exposition, rising action, climax, falling action and resolution. These stories are told with images, video and data. They inspire. They enlighten. They amuse.”]
3. Break through silos to erase seams between channels and experiences.
   [“Customers are channel blind.”]
4. Use data to target precisely and measure relentlessly.
   [Nuf said. But did you know eBay collects more than 50 petabytes of customer data a day?!]
5. Experiment aggressively, and challenge business model assumptions.
   [See The Agitator’s last week post … Winning Ideas and Idea Killers.]

All good things to do, from a tactical standpoint.

But what really sets great fundraisers apart? IMHO, in a word … empathy.

Tom