By Randall Hallett 

Fundraising is a major component of the job description of most nonprofit chief executives — whether they like it or not. Many of them have never been fundraisers and lack the basic understanding and expertise in dealing with a nonprofit’s most important donors.

So, what can philanthropy leaders do to support your CEO, making them more valuable to fundraising efforts and extending needed tenure.

1. You should be bold.  If your CEO doesn’t come with years of successful fundraising, it is the CPO’s (chief philanthropy officer) responsibility to respectively educate the CEO about their critical role with key donors…and that means speaking truth to power. Being bold means you have to “sell” the ROI of the CEO’s time in philanthropy relationship building, the CEO’s critical value with larger donors, and respectfully push for more access to a CEO.

2. Know your nonprofit business, beyond philanthropy. Too often, CPO’s know philanthropy but don’t know the details of the nonprofit’s business model. Your responsibility, and creditability, goes beyond just fundraising.  The more complicated the nonprofit business (e.g., healthcare or higher education), the more you need to know about how non-fundraising revenue/expenditures work, how strategic planning efforts are developed, and why the community sees the nonprofit as it does. In essence, you, or any good philanthropy professional leader, has to speak “their” language rather than assume the CEO (or CFO) can understand fundraising lingo/process.

3. You have to engage key volunteers. Whether a nonprofit has one board or two (governance and foundation), getting your volunteers involved is critical.  While your CEO is the head of the organization, the “owner” of the nonprofit is the community members who serve on the board.  

Your CEOs may come and go, but board “ownership” will always remain.  If you, in partnership, with the board(s) actively engaging in appropriate fundraising tactics, your CEO is more likely to follow suit. However, when board members are isolated from fundraising, your CEO will do the same, creating a siloing effect, which will only harm the overall philanthropy efforts.

4. Share the correct data. CEOs, like other members of the leadership team, use data to make daily decisions. The same is true with philanthropy data. But too often, CPOs share the wrong information. You should be using basic dashboards with 5-8 major datapoints. You should consider the following dashboard categories for the current fiscal year.

1. Dollars raised (cash)
2. Dollars raised (cash and pledges)
3. Number of gifts at/above major gift level (e.g., $10,000)
4. Number of gifts at/above a higher level (e.g., $100,000)
5. Number of outstanding/not realized solicitations above major gift level (e.g., $10,000)
6. ROI of fundraising (revenue/expenses)

You should also compare these same data points of your department’s efforts from the previous year or the average of the last three years.  You can also include information from national standards, available to you from various national associations.  

Your CEO doesn’t care about the details and doesn’t have time to ask. Your responsibility is to show them the biggest effect of philanthropic revenue, which comes from the largest categories of your fundraising opportunities. The above data points are numbers that a CEO, and executive leadership, can understand.

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Randall Hallett is founder of Hallett Philanthropy in Omaha, Nebraska.

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