The Hardest Sell in Fund Raising: Attracting Talent

As ambitions grow while government support wanes, colleges rapidly expand their development staffs

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By KATHRYN MASTERSON and BRAD WOLVERTON

Connie Kravas has hired so many people in the last five years that at one point she had a hard time remembering all their names. The vice president for university advancement at the University of Washington has brought in 64 new fund raisers since 2002 — close to doubling its staff — to help raise money for a $2-billion-plus campaign.

Many college development offices have experienced similar rapid growth in recent years, with many adding fund raisers at a faster rate than ever. At a time when many industries are shedding jobs, this hiring boom shows no signs of slowing.

Fueling the growth are several converging trends. Government support is down, competition for dollars is up, and institutions without strong fund-raising operations are at risk of being left behind. And today's mega-campaigns have proved it's possible to raise what were once unthinkable amounts of money — and then do it again.

Some of the most explosive growth has happened at large, public doctoral institutions, where big ambitions for top-level research and state-of-the-art facilities exist alongside declining state support and endowment-per-student amounts that are one-tenth the size of their private counterparts'.

Among the 10 public doctoral universities that raised the most private donations in 2007 — a total of nearly $3-billion, or 10 percent of the total private gifts to higher education that year — the majority had expanded their fund-raising staffs by at least 25 percent in five years, a new survey by The Chronicle shows. The University of Washington reported the most growth, at 84 percent. The University of California at Los Angeles was second, with 39 percent.

"Public universities didn't have to do this for many, many years," says Rhea Turteltaub, vice chancellor for external affairs at UCLA. Now, she says, "it's out of necessity." Her university brought in $365-million in 2007, the most of any public institution. It aspires to one day raise $500-million each year.

Insiders predict the hiring frenzy will continue, slow economy or not.

"There's plenty of evidence we are going to see [colleges] continue to increase the size of their fund-raising staff," says John Lippincott, president of the Council for Advancement and Support of Education. As some campaigns nudge closer to the $5-billion mark, institutions need more talent in the field — and plan to add it. Council members have told Mr. Lippincott they are at only half the staff levels they need to tap all the money they think is available.

A Recruiting Frenzy

As colleges have kicked off big campaigns, they have also kicked off a hiring spree. The Johns Hopkins University has hired 43 fund raisers in the past five years, a nearly 50-percent increase in people, to help lead the university's $3.2-billion campaign. It plans to add 50 more by 2012.

Over the past three years, as the University of Chicago has completed a $2-billion-plus campaign, it has increased its development staff, including fund raisers and support personnel, some 50 percent, to more than 400 employees.

Chicago has no plans to let go of any of its fund raisers, even though its campaign ended last month. Neither does Washington.

"I don't know of anyone where at the end of a campaign you give out a bunch of pink slips," says Sandy Wilcox, president of the University of Wisconsin Foundation. "Every time you come out of a campaign, you come out with more prospects and more work to go do."

Wisconsin has one of the smallest development offices of any major university, with just 51 fund raisers. But even the Badgers' staff has grown by 24 percent in the past five years.

It's not just the Ivies and big publics growing at this speed. The University of Rochester has hired 70 people in its development office in the last three years — with plans to hire another 60 or 70, says James D. Thompson, senior vice president and chief advancement officer.

His case for hiring more fund raisers boils down to this: You've got to put people on airplanes. Direct contact with donors leads to relationships, which lead to a feeling of involvement with the university — and in the best-case scenario, a well-publicized gift.

"No matter how much they love your school, they only come down once or twice a year," Mr. Thompson says of donors. "You have to bring it to them."

The Hiring Climate

As a fund-raising consultant, Bruce Flessner works with many colleges around the country, and in talking to advancement officers, he finds staffing to be the biggest worry on their minds.

"Talent is everything in this business," he says. "It's probably true that a handful of people are responsible for most of the results."

The problem for managers is how to reward stars and keep them happy while hiding their success from rapacious recruiters.

Colleges are competing not only with other higher-education institutions, but also with an expanding universe of charities. Over the past 12 years, the number of nonprofit groups has jumped 73 percent, to 1.1 million, according to the Internal Revenue Service. And like the best colleges, many well-known charities have doubled or even tripled their fund-raising staffs as they have begun ever-larger campaigns.

As demand for top performers has gone up, so have pay and benefits. Over the past few years, salaries for many upper-level fund-raising positions have climbed 25 percent or more, executive-search officials say. High-profile positions can command upwards of $300,000 — and not just at the wealthiest private colleges. One recently hired chief development officer at a large public institution landed more than $200,000.

"A few years ago, that position would have paid in the mid-$100's," says Lynda M. McKay, director of executive search at Campbell & Company, the Chicago company that handled the hiring.

With more pay comes higher expectations. Even though it takes years to cultivate donor relationships, some fund raisers say they feel pressure to produce gifts soon after taking new jobs. That climate has led some colleges to hold high-level positions open for a year or more — or call off job searches altogether — because they can't find the right person. At UCLA, it takes six to nine months, on average, to fill a fund-raising spot.

To find and keep the right people, a growing number of institutions have added or are exploring corporate-style incentive pay, a previously taboo topic in charity circles. Starting in August, development officers at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston are eligible to receive a bonus of up to 10 percent of their salaries in part for meeting stringent individual fund-raising goals.

Tired of having their fund raisers poached by larger institutions, leaders from the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities, which includes 28 institutions, plan to discuss compensation incentives, including balloon payments for fund raisers who stay through the end of campaigns, at a January meeting.

Because of a shortage of experienced talent, even the most prestigious colleges have had to adjust. The University of Michigan has started an internship program to tap its own undergraduate talent — and get to them before someone else does. And the University of Chicago has hired more young people and added new positions to help retain them.

"You have to be willing to promote people every six months or year depending on their work," says Ronald J. Schiller, vice president for development and alumni relations at Chicago. "Otherwise you will justifiably lose them to another place."

The Tipping Point?

But at some point, is it possible to have too many fund raisers?

Jennifer Zaslow, a senior analyst at Eduventures Inc., an education-consulting company, believes there may be a tipping point for each institution and its donors — but says none of her clients think they are close to it.

"Most of our members still think there's room to grow, even the larger institutions," she says.

An Eduventures study released last month looking at returns on investment in staffing and budgets for development offices showed that the more you invest — and the bigger your staff — the more money you bring in.

In offices with between 20 and 50 staff members, the average raised per fund raiser was $1.9-million. For the largest, with more than 250, it was $2.8-million.

But having a larger fund-raising staff by itself does not guarantee that donations will continue to grow at the same rate. And a weakening economy may mean that more fund raisers work longer to bring in the same amounts.

One thing's for sure: Despite the economy and hiring challenges, university development offices are in a good spot. They hold the keys to one of the hottest job markets in the country.

Mr. Schiller, of the University of Chicago, is especially bullish on the profession.

"The problem is a supply-and-demand issue, and those tend to correct themselves," he says. "If there is growth in this industry, and other industries aren't growing, more people will get interested in development."

Grant Sabatier contributed research assistance to this article.