u/etherealsmog

My organization had a longtime donor—and our largest annual contributor—die suddenly and unexpectedly last August.

We have modestly good relations with a few of his children, so after a period of cultivation and stewardship, we asked his daughter to match his annual six-figure gift to our organization before the end of our fiscal year in June. She agreed and made the donation.

Then, in July, we received a larger six-figure donation from a donor-advised fund that the father had occasionally used to grant to us, and it seems his oldest son has inherited decision making authority and gave us a substantial grant to make up for his father’s prior giving history. We didn’t solicit this donation, but it’s not entirely a surprise that his son would use the DAF to continue giving to us. Our CEO did discuss the grant with the son and thank him, but I’m not sure we got as much clarity about what motivated the decision as I (the advancement director) would have liked.

I’m curious what people would suggest about how we approach the two children moving forward. It’s not clear to us whether they both realize that they collectively gave us over half a million dollars in the past two months, and we don’t want either side to “compare notes” and feel like we took advantage of the uncertainty around the father’s death to secure a lot more funding than we typically get.

But at the same time, we don’t want to disclose each other’s giving or let either side think their respective generosity is unneeded.

It’s sort of delicate, because we’d like to continue the giving relationship with both children (and there’s another who has also donated to us), but especially because the father’s death was a tragic surprise and also his estate plans weren’t as “tidy” as his kids would have liked, I think it’s possible that both children thought they were just acting on their father’s behalf and perhaps they would have chosen to give differently if they were communicating their own philanthropy with each other.

Does anyone have any suggestion for how best to handle this “double” gift? We want to respect everyone’s privacy and assume they’re making informed decisions about their own giving, but we also don’t want to overlook a possible “conflict” in how they were trying to honor their dad’s commitments.

I posted a few weeks ago about an interview process that I was shocked had gone poorly, and I got some negative feedback really on here for sounding whiny haha. So I took my own disappointment at that whole situation to realize I'm pretty unhappy with my current role and start looking seriously for new employment and I'm just learning... things are rough out there.

I'm curious if other people have had some level of experience like what I'm going through. I cannot seem to get any interest for roles beyond a screening interview even when there's exceptionally clear alignment with what I do and the sector I work in.

Some examples: A. I recently applied for a job that basically sits at the intersection of my current job and my previous assignment, and as far as I can tell, I won't even get a screening interview. B. I was recruited to my current role, so I spoke with the recruitment agency that brought me here and the new recruiter I spoke with basically implied that my work experience doesn't really align with the open positions I was inquiring about... even though it's literally exactly what they recruited me to do with my current employer. C. I applied for a job with an organization I've been donating personally to for 5+ years and haven't heard anything back.

I feel like I'm up against four major issues and I don't know how to get around them.

1: People hiring for roles exactly like what I'm currently doing - same mission fit, same sector, same qualifications - are discrediting my real-world experience with running an advancement office for smaller organizations in favor of people who have been a major gifts officer for gigantic institutions. So the guy with half my experience who can say, "Well, someone handed me a list of 85 donors to go out and visit and secure 60 five- and six-figure gifts, so I'm a master fundraiser!" will move forward in the process, but if I say, "Well, I have a portfolio of 35 five- and six-figure gifts, plus a portfolio of 130 four-figure gifts, and I write grants, and I supervise staff, and I write our direct mail collateral, and I plan our events, and I handle estate bequests," they seem to see me as someone who's just doing "admin" work and not "real" fundraising work. "You're more of a generalist, and I think we're looking for a road warrior," is something I was recently told.

2: I am deliberately limiting my search to remote roles, which I know is just going to yield lesser returns, but I feel like I'm up against some level of geographic discrimination. I live and work now in a small rural community, but previously worked in major metro areas. So even though I'm a 35-minute drive from a major airport, and I can get to basically anywhere in a neighboring metro in under 1:15 hours, and I've previously worked in major metro areas - I feel like people see the town on my resume and go, "Oh, he's not really doing real fundraising, he's just rubbing elbows with local yokels," even though I currently work for an organization with a donor network that has donors in all fifty countries and I've identified 16 metro regions (sometimes encompassing more than one metro) where we have "core" major donors that I routinely touch base with, although I'm not always visiting them personally to secure a gift.

3: At the same time I can't get people in my own niche of the fundraising world to take me seriously because I haven't worked for like a university endowment or a national nonprofit, I also can't get people outside of my niche to take me seriously. I feel like everyone sees my organizations and think, "Well, those are very different from our mission, so he probably wouldn't be able to pivot very easily." Sometimes even on job postings where it explicitly says, "We're open to people who haven't done this exact line of work if they can demonstrate the right skills and aptitudes."

4: My current organization is essentially a "little sibling" to a much larger local institution, so part of why I can't point to the range of "successes" in my current role is because I'm talking to the exact same five-, six-, and seven-figure donors, but I am often told by my org's leadership things like: "Well, we can't talk to them right now about increasing their giving because Big Sibling has an open solicitation with them," or, "Well, we're not sure that really falls within our purview because that's more something people expect Big Sibling to take the lead on." So even though I'm managing a major gift portfolio with huge donors, I can only point to getting a $25,000 gift while my colleagues across the street can point to getting $500,000 gifts, and it makes it look comparatively like my scrappy advancement office doesn't do much.

I'm just at a complete loss for how not to get discouraged and give up. I had previously been having conversations with my organization's leadership about how we can strategically do more and grow our mission, but it has become clear that my role is completely stagnant where I'm at. And their commitment to stagnation is now making my job search 50 times more difficult because, despite increasing their total revenue by about 5 times during the 3 years I've been here compared to the 3 years prior to my coming, people still see my resume and think, "Well, he's small potatoes." I'm tempted to take a huge paycut and just change careers altogether, but financially I don't want to go down that path.

I guess I just need encouragement. I'm at a point where all I can think about everyday is how much I hate both my job and how much I hate my job search. I feel trapped by golden handcuffs - I'm very well-compensated, but at an organization increasingly run like a shitshow because they're spending money dramatically faster than I can raise it, then complain that I haven't done enough despite tripling their revenues. And I think they realize I can't easily find work elsewhere so there's no impetus to reinvest in the advancement team because they can just blame me if the revenue doesn't keep pace.

I recently applied for a “young” (<5 years) nonprofit organization hiring a director of major gifts for the first time. It’s in the same general charitable field as I’ve spent most of my career in.

I have 10 years of fundraising experience, and most recently have been at an organization for three years where I helped complete a low eight-figure capital campaign while also growing annual fund revenue.

I felt like was more or less guaranteed an invitation to an interview, but I was given a written set of pointed questions about my specific resume details. I answered them pretty directly and transparently, although I didn’t really feel they addressed the things about my experience I would have liked to address in a personal conversation.

I just got a rejection email yesterday and I’m kind of stewing over it. I feel like my experience is such a slam dunk “we want to speak to this guy” kind of thing that I’m just absolutely bewildered that no one would have said, “Let’s get him on the phone or a Zoom call.” I mean… I closed a $200,000 ask with a donor just this week!

I’ve been contemplating whether it is worth the effort to ask for feedback on my application. I suspect a big thing is that I asked them to meet my current salary, and I bet they don’t want to, as I’m pretty well compensated. There wasn’t a posted salary range. But I’m also like… If my salary is $30,000 above what you budgeted but I can bring skills to surpass your goal by $100,000 you still win. I can also see their 990s and that their leadership staff is making $30K to $80K more than I asked for, so I felt my compensation is in line.

But I also have this sort of “imposter syndrome,” because I constantly feel like I run up against people who act like, “Oh man, I’m a major gifts extraordinaire! I asked 140 people to give a million each and they all said yes!” Meanwhile, they had a development team of 20 people behind them who did all of the behind the scenes work, and all they really did was set appointments and hand a written proposal over.

I’ve mostly worked for small, lean organizations where I had to do everything, so I have a massive array of successful experience with the whole “big picture” of a fundraising operation, but I feel like it looks less “impressive” because I can’t say, “My elite university advancement office handed me a Rolodex of major donors that I’ll be bringing with me.” And they’ll hire someone like that who comes in, burns through a bunch of big money asks for a year or two, then moves on to greener pastures while leaving their C.R.M. in shambles and doing none of the unsexy grunt work that makes a successful advancement office work, and suddenly an applicant with my skill set looks attractive to come in and clean up. (That seems to be my career path—let’s hire him to do the shit work no one else took care of to fix our advancement office.)

I just genuinely would like to understand where in the process I went wrong, as I often can’t decipher why I feel like I’m a perfect fit for a job but then get rejected for interviews. Is it worth asking for feedback?

I’m feeling salty so I know I need to give it a couple days to ask tactfully and warmly, but I genuinely can’t understand why ten years of experience in a directly related field with a history of raising six- and seven-figure gifts only warranted a “please submit your written responses to these questions” interview and not an invitation to a personal conversation.