THE FUND RAISER

Incompetence Reshuffled

At what point does a résumé become a tornado siren heralding the arrival of an ill wind?

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By MARK J. DROZDOWSKI

I'm an ardent baseball fan and a banner-waving member of Red Sox Nation, so I pay close attention to what transpires on and off the field. I understand the game pretty well, but one phenomenon still baffles me: Why do teams hire managers who've failed so many times?

A relative handful of managers make their way around the league, hopping from one team to another, bringing with them their unique brand of incompetence. A guy will spend a decade winning three or four games out of 10 before arriving in a new city to great fanfare, promising pennants and buoying the spirits of fans. A couple of losing seasons later, he'll be unceremoniously dumped as the team seeks to "pursue new directions."

Next year, he'll once again find a happy home with another team, which evidently believes that this time will be the charm.

What about new blood? Why not give someone else a chance? Why hire a proven loser? Are managers that hard to find?

I might also ask: Are good fund raisers that hard to find?

Evidently so. In conversations with colleagues over the years, I've encountered this issue plenty. "Josh was underperforming for a while," they'll say, "so we had to let him go. Nice chap, really, but not a great fund raiser."

Where did ol' Josh land? At another institution, perhaps a sister college or even a university a couple of rungs up the academic food chain. He's gained responsibility, sports a hefty title, and rakes in a few more bucks. The new institution proudly hails Josh's arrival in the local news.

And like the bumbling baseball coach, Josh will be gone before long.

At what point does a résumé become a tornado siren heralding the arrival of an ill wind? Fund raisers who excel at keeping busy doing everything but their jobs — that is, raising money — become similarly expert at hiding a lack of productivity. They cite inputs instead of outcomes. They design and implement and manage and coordinate and facilitate and liaise. They personify action verbs.

But they don't produce results. How about some numbers? Can we quantify anything here? You managed a portfolio of major-gift prospects. Lovely. Exactly how much money did you raise last year? The year before? How many suspects became prospects, and how many prospects became donors?

If you find yourself asking those kinds of questions upon reviewing a résumé, beware. You've encountered input man. He'll dazzle you and be a blur of motion but accomplish nothing. You'll wonder how you misread him.

You'll also wonder why he warranted glowing references. You'll ask yourself, "Was I misled?" Perhaps. Managers are trained not to say anything negative about job candidates, even if the person in question makes noises with his armpits and suffers from chronic halitosis. We can, however, talk this guy up if we're eager to foist him on the competition or simply rid ourselves of a rotten egg. That, I suspect, happens more often than we'd like to believe.

"Oh, sure, Josh really knows this business well," you'll hear. "And he's a very hard worker."

"Tell me about some of the largest gifts he's landed," you might ask.

Your referee will proceed to paraphrase Seinfeld: "Fund raisers are like gossamer, and one doesn't dissect gossamer."

That's a clue.

But for some reason, folks like Josh slip through, perhaps blinding us with their charm and their ability to talk a good game. Might the competitive job market be at fault?

A recent cover story (The Chronicle, July 18) described universities' efforts to recruit and retain good development officers. Some institutions are expanding their staffs by the dozen in anticipation of major campaigns. Managers or headhunters in such a "recruiting frenzy" may become — let me exaggerate ever so slightly — desperate to find good talent, especially at institutions with built-in recruiting disadvantages such as remote locations and relatively modest pay.

They sift through résumés searching for the right buzzwords and the requisite titles and years of experience. Perhaps they don't look beyond the rhetoric and fall prey to input man's masterful cover-up. When the candidate arrives for an interview sporting a golden tongue, a quick wit, and a perfectly tailored suit, we're sold. A few carefully worded or disingenuous references later, and he's in.

How long will it take for Josh's incompetence to surface? To a trained eye, maybe not long at all. But amid a sea of new hires demonstrating myriad learning curves and work styles, Josh can coast for a while.

A former boss of mine once told me he doesn't begin evaluating fund raisers' productivity until their third year. The first year is spent learning the institution; the second, learning the donor base. In the third year, everything comes together and money pours in. Or not. Three years, evidently, is just enough time not to prove your incompetence before seeking greener pastures. And I am suggesting every connotation of "greener."

As a result, we have the development equivalent of "sub-.500" managers bounding from one institution to the next.

Is that why turnover is so high? We often blame the marketplace and the lure of the lucre. People move out to move up, or at least to make higher salaries. How many of them aren't so much seeking new opportunities as they are escaping certain failure? As long as the profession allows it, we'll continue to reshuffle incompetence.

I'll admit that sometimes fund raisers fail because of bad situations. Terrible management. Insufficient budgets. Disconnected boards. Lousy staff. It happens. But not every time. Common-denominator theory suggests that if you encounter problems and tank everywhere you go, perhaps you're a bigger part of the problem than you think.

Meanwhile, highly qualified people seeking entry to the profession remain outside the gates. And folks with limited experience but high potential get overlooked in favor of those demonstrating sufficient seat time. The best hiring managers have long embraced outsiders and newbies; others will follow suit as the talent pool struggles to keep pace with demand.

To all this, I say caveat emptor. Take time to evaluate candidates carefully, reading between résumé lines, asking tough questions, and not settling for pat answers and facile observations. Probe for results. And don't hire carelessly because a campaign deadline looms. It can wait.

Mark J. Drozdowski is executive director of the Fitchburg State College Foundation, in Massachusetts. To read his previous columns, see http://chronicle.com/jobs/news/archives/columns/the_fund_raiser.