The first step consists in profiling your ideal new fundraiser. Gather all the members of the organisation and set as the meeting’s goal that of identifying who will best suit the existing working environment. It is of crucial importance that all the members of staff and volunteers participate in the event; this will make everybody responsible and aware of the selection process.
Depending on the size of the convened team, you could decide to ask to every member of staff to profile their ideal candidate and summarise main characteristics on a board. You could also ask the participating members to write down on a paper the 5 qualities they believe the ideal candidate should possess and then summarise the results on a board.
It is important that after gathering thoughts and ideas, the group at large discusses the results to agree on the main characteristics of the ideal candidate. Participants in the activity should consider writing something about the skills of the candidate, the candidate’s background, the candidate’s work ethic, the candidate’s character and the candidate’s expectations.
By way of example, here is the list of the most commonly listed qualities for fundraisers.
They should be passionate, committed, curious, honest and reliable. They should also possess good communication skills, good ethics and be creative.
To listen, understand and communicate to solve problems are enlisted as main tasks to be performed by the fundraiser.
To be sure, the fact that fundraisers must be creative and passionate goes without further explanation.
A good fundraiser is able to think outside the box; he/she can search for donors where other did not, he/she can write project proposals in a professional and engaging way, he/she is ready to dedicate time and resources to make sure that a project can begin even when it is a small community project.
You should also consider that fundraising is far from an easy task. Fundraisers spend time writing up applications that will never be funded, they plan activities and set targets for projects that will never begin and they will also send letters and pleas to many potential donors who will hardly reply. To be a fundraiser implies to be able to manage rejections and disappointment. The ideal candidate is therefore an individual with a positive attitude and an optimistic approach to life. Further, you should be looking for someone who can prove to be able to deal with rejection and to transform a failure into a learning experience. Fundraising is not a science and there are no formulae to draft a perfect proposal. There are strategies to improve the chances of success for an application, which could be learnt by anyone. The most important characteristic of a fundraiser is therefore their resilience. This is the reason why you should select an individual who has a proven interest in the activities of your organisation, someone who believes in the cause embraced by the NGO and someone who is willing to accept new challenges and to learn in the process.
Another important characteristic for fundraiser is to possess highly developed social skills. Consider that your fundraiser will be in charge of writing up applications and monitor calls, but he/she will also be in charge of attending conferences, donor meetings, seminars and workshops. Therefore you should be looking for someone who can easily establish relationships with people, ideally someone with an outgoing personality; someone easy to talk to and able to successfully exchange information and build long term working partnerships. Your fundraiser will be responsible for creating new possibilities for collaboration with other NGOs and groups working in the territory.
Further, the fundraiser is someone who can read between lines. He/she will be able to critically engage with open calls or information found about potential donors to understand what the donor’s real needs and motivation are. As such, the ideal candidate is someone who can engage with research critically and also someone with an analytical mind.
Avoid limiting the search for candidates to those with previous experience as fundraiser. As previously said, fundraising skills are mostly transferable skills, which could have been developed while doing other jobs. As such, make sure to increase your possibilities to spot the best candidate and do not ask exclusively for people with experience in the field! Evidence shows that the best fundraisers are those who started off in other fields and later approached fundraising as a profession. For instance, you could consider candidates with experience in planning (such wedding or special events planners) because of their organisational skills or candidates with experience in luxury retail because they will know how to approach potential donors and how to push the sales. You could also consider candidates with teaching experience or who had worked in human resources because they had been trained to listen to people, understand concerns and solve problems quickly thus they will best profile potential donors and quickly develop strategies to approach them.
