Ken Burnett | Where do I start? My first three weeks as a fundraiser and how I might have made more of them.

A fundraiser’s first few weeks are likely to be stressful, both for employer and employee. The boss has to put on hold the 101 urgent things on his/her agenda to fill up the hours for the new recruit, who is inevitably more a hindrance than a help these first few weeks. The new arrival is apt to be at best bewildered, if not completely at sea the entire time. Unless the process is highly organised, invariably those first three weeks will be a challenge for all concerned. Getting those first few weeks right could have massive benefits for our profession. Far too many talented young entrants don’t stay long in fundraising. If we could reduce the too-high tally of false career starts, everyone would benefit.

How much better it could so easily be nowadays. Sadly though it isn’t, at least not always.

Several decades on from my first few weeks as a fundraiser I was given an award for having been around a long time. In my acceptance speech I pleaded with the judges, saying I didn’t want any lifetime achievement-type award as it just seemed a bauble to soften the blow of going, a sort of golden goodbye. What I really wanted, I told judges and audience, was for them to give me the award for ‘most promising newcomer’. Now, that’s something I’d commit sin for!

It didn’t happen.

If I could have my first few weeks again (one day, when pigs fly)
For sure I’d do things differently. If I were in charge of new recruits and some good fairy gave me enough wishes I’d make it my business to give them all a stunning first few weeks to remember. I’d knock their socks off, make them sit up, dispel their misconceptions and open their eyes to endless possibilities. I’d fill their heads with all the good stuff they need to know, that’ll serve them superbly in the coming decades. Because their purpose is nothing less than to change the world. To have any chance of even denting that difficult task, they need the very best start possible. So…

• I’d summarise the indispensable basics in a digestible form.
• I’d introduce them to some of the great figures and lessons of history.
• I’d set them up with some of fundraising’s best books.
• I’d immerse them in fundraising’s great writers, the power and potential of storytelling and wisely-chosen words.
• I’d frame the culture and ethos that they need to engage and inspire donors.
• I’d share profound sayings that’ll shape their fundraising day by day.
• I’d spread before them the world’s biggest, best collection of fundraising case histories across the 20+ main areas of our profession.
• …and lots more besides. As a sign of how important I think this is, you’ll find links to all of the above, opposite –>. What follows is all I’ve learned about what a new fundraiser should know, from the start.

A not-so-good start
In many ways my first few weeks weren’t all that great, if I’m honest. There was little guidance around back then: no Institute of Fundraising, no conferences, no good books, no magazines for fundraisers. Nothing. And no SOFII.org – the internet hadn’t been invented. With just a few exceptions I was pretty much left to my own devices and expected to get on with it.

So, if you count yourself among today’s new recruits I really envy you, because there’s now so many sources of help for you. But you have a different kind of problem. For you, there’s just so much stuff around. How do you sort the ‘must haves’ from the ‘merely good to knows’? Our in-boxes are awash with assorted advices. It’s a flood – a tsunami even. Where do you start?

Welcome to your working life!
You’ve just started. It’s day one of the rest of your life, or at least, in your new role as a fundraiser.

There’s a lot to do. Your boss is wondering how to get you up-to-speed in your new profession with minimum delay. You need to sort out what’s essential from what’s merely nice to know. But luckily for you, help is close at hand, 24/7. And it’s free.

There’s more to this than just the mechanics, more than just ‘to-do’ lists and homework to mug up on. Culture, attitudes, aspirations and inspirations count too. For it’s beliefs, values and dependable integrity that should give fundraising its edge over more commercial trade.

Each fundraiser’s first few weeks are vitally important because when they start out, fresh, impressionable and ready for change, newcomers to fundraising are at their peak of possibilities and expectations. It can so easily seem mostly downhill from there. If we leave it till later all hope of change is quickly lost. The distinguished fundraising academic professor Adrian Sargeant recently wrote to me, as follows,

…we now have experimental data that indicates that when donors’ genuine needs are attended to, giving literally doubles. Deliberately attending to how we make people feel when we communicate makes people feel good (we’ve measured that too) and because it feels good - they give more - much more. They’re also more likely to engage in other supportive behaviours.

In an ideal world our profession might have focused on making people feel great when they gave - as a good thing in its own right, whether doing so raised more money or not! But it turns out, it does raise a lot more money.

The importance of the donor experience should never have been in any doubt - but it does feel sometimes as though we have to ‘sell’ it to people.

I suggest (if I were your boss I’d insist) that you put that in bold letters above your desk. At least the following gem from it. And at regular intervals, shine a light upon it.

…when donors’ genuine needs are attended to, giving literally doubles.

All too often, as soon as some people get into their jobs for even a few months they lose sight of even the most bleedin’ obvious. There must be a syndrome, a medical name for it – the amnesia factor, perhaps, or organisational myopia. The symptoms, invariably, are that day-to-day priorities take over, the basics are elbowed out to make way for targets, silos and internal structures as convenience gets precedence over what the now not-so-young, not-so-fresh fundraiser secretly knows to be right.

So nothing changes. Nor will it change, until some inspired new fundraiser comes along and changes it.

To help, there’s an antidote coming soon on SOFII. See opposite. It’s called, My first three weeks as a fundraiser. While that’s being prepared, here are some shortcuts to what will really matter in those crucial early days. Of course to sweep up everything that’s likely to fall through the cracks of institutional memory and to fully fill those first few weeks will take an amount of individual tailoring – who to meet, where to go, what to see, etc. But what follows gives a solid base to build on.

There are literally hundreds of fundraising treasures linked here. What you – or your new recruits – will make of them is of course up to you.

Continued top of column 2, above.

With thanks to all the sponsors, supporters and contributors who over the years have helped to make SOFII possible, for better fundraising for a better world.

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