How Can We Best Retain Fundraisers?
In our sector, we’re lucky enough to be surrounded by so many passionate, hard-working people who care deeply about advancing meaningful causes. But once you have successfully hired someone great (and probably spent a lot of time and energy while doing it!) you don’t want them to just leave after just a year or two. How can you get them to stick around?
Salaries can be quick to blame, but instead, consider taking a look at your organization’s culture. Culture is an organization’s personality - it’s defined by the shared set of workplace beliefs, values, attitudes, and behaviors that employers and employees practice. It informs and defines so much of what your team does, and includes both written and unwritten rules that people follow. It can also influence how team members are viewed both in terms of their roles within the organization and the salaries that they’re paid. A dysfunctional culture creates a toxic work environment, and, therefore, jeopardizes overall quality of work and professional relationships. And a dysfunctional culture isn’t just limited to the staff. It creeps into the mindset and functioning of the board as well.
If you’re able to create positive change within your organization’s culture, you’ll more than likely see improvements everywhere - morale, retention, productivity, and more. This positive change is also seen in the organization investing in the activities that leverage greatest return, for example, fundraising. Remember that while this may not happen overnight, the long-haul effort of building a healthy and inclusive culture will help lower turnover rate and help retain the team you’ve worked so hard to build. And if it can take, on average, up to 18 months to build toward a large-gift solicitation and your fundraising team turnover happens every two years (again, on average), isn’t this a good place to start to create more positive change?