While the nonprofit field is roughly 60% women, what is nonprofit leadership like?

How many women sit on your nonprofit board? How many female CEOs and VPs do you know? How many women do you see presenting at conferences? How many female Executive Directors do you know? If you’re anything like me, you’ll have seen boards, speakers, and executive leadership that is overwhelmingly male.

A recent New York Times Article talked about women leading boards in Norway.

“Norway passed a law in 2003 mandating that women make up 40 percent of membership on company boards. At the time, only 7 percent of board seats were held by women. Full compliance was reached in 2008.”

The theory went that if more women sat on corporate boards, more women would become CEOs and VPs. It hasn’t happened yet, but it could.

Should we pass similar laws in America? What do you think would happen if we did?

Slideshow on Women in Norway

What do you think would help more women become CEOs and VPs?

How do you think leadership would be different if more women ran nonprofits?

What would empower you to lead as a fundraiser, and as a nonprofit executive?

Would you like more responsibility? A certification or more money attached to achieving nonprofit fundraising goals?

Should we make quotas, like Norway, for women on our nonprofit and for profit boards?

In my tenure at various nonprofit organizations, I’ve seen plenty of women in middle management or at the lower rungs of the organization. Perhaps the question should be, how can we empower women currently inside nonprofit organizations to lead them?

If what Nicolas Kristof of the New York Times says is true, and the economic fate of the world lies in helping empower women, then I wonder if there are any NGOs working on empowering women to lead nonprofits.

two women interview

First of all, you got the interview! Congratulations!

Now you’re getting ready for it. You’ve researched your organization on Guidestar. You’ve got your interview questions. You’ve got your pad, pen, and a good idea of what 3 major issues the organization is facing right now,and how you can help solve those issues.

1. Breathe. Meditate for 10 minutes before going into your interview.

2. Have a friend coach you in the interview questions. Get good at responding positively to potentially negative questions, such as, ‘Why did you leave your last job?”

3. Drink a cup of herbal or green tea, not coffee, before the interview.

4. Know that you can help them solve their problems.

5. Remember. It’s just a job. You will have many jobs in your life. This is just one interview. If you make it, great, and if not, you’ll have another chance to do better next time.

Ask yourself these questions:

Where are you strong in your fundraising program, and where would you like to grow?
Is your fundraising team primarily outreach in the community with fundraising thrown in as an afterthought?
Or do you focus more on events and appeals?
Or are you mainly concerned with major gifts right now?

If you want to know how to pare down your fundraising team, or how to ramp it up, here’s a good sample skeleton crew:

0. Marketing/Social Media Coordinator (to get your nonprofit featured in blogs, and secondarily, in traditional media)
Their skillset should be in writing and website programming and graphic design. They should have an English or Communications degree, and know CSS and HTML, or be willing to learn. PHP and Javascript would be a bonus. The main goal for their position should be once or twice a month, get your nonprofit featured in news blogs, such as the Huffington Post, and the major newspaper. They need to have a specific message each month, and have 2-3 good stories illustrating this, which they can send out as a press release to news outlets and e-newsletter to your donors. The secondary goal is to analyse your website, and try to find something to improve in it each month, either through making it more like kiva.org, or mercycorps.org, or some other, successful nonprofit, and using social media to start conversations with people in FB, LI and Twitter. They should also create the newsletter, and appeals. Metrics will be increasing online donations, number of articles/features per month, and increasing numbers of people in social media groups/followers.

1. Development Assistant (to enter donations, research grants, help out where needed)
The main skillset for this position should be detail-oriented data entry, research, and persuasive public speaking.
The main goal for this position should be to enter all of the relevant information, and get the thank you letters out the door within 24 hours. The secondary goal should be to fill in for the events coordinator, representing your nonprofit at community events, wherever possible. (Farmer’s markets, festivals, church gatherings, etc.) and always encouraging people to give, and having envelopes right there ready for them to donate. They can help the marketing/social media coordinator where needed too.

2. Events Coordinator/Outreach Coordinator (to represent and table at other organization’s events as well as create your own events)
The main skillset for this position should be detail-oriented data entry, proactive phone calls, persuasive speaking, and research.
The main goal of this position should be to get as much money as possible from each event through sponsorships and individual donations.
The person can research important events to be involved with, as well as what has worked for other nonprofits, and what your nonprofit could try. Giveaways, such as pens, can be useful for keeping your nonprofit on their radar. This person needs to be able to tell any person walking up to them how your nonprofit can help them, and why they should care, within 30 seconds.
The metrics for this position should be money from each event, and money from collaborative events, as well as how many people they talked with, and how many people gave their contact information.

3. Grants Manager/Estate planner (to research, write and track government and foundation grants, as well as work on planned giving appeals)
The grants manager’s main skillset should be research, detail-oriented data entry, and project management.
The main goal of their position should be to get as much grant money as possible, you set the goal, and it may also be possible to get government money for the services you provide, either through government contracts or on a more local level. See if you can get written into the city budget.
For estate planning, the person should create brochures around estate planning, and put ad versions of the brochures into relevant newspapers and magazines, and meet with people to talk about estate planning. They should be coached on the right language to use, and how to tactfully raise the issue.
Metrics should be grants money raised, perhaps 500,000 to 1 million per year, depending on your grants history, and estate money raised per year, and you set those performance goals. In this position, it will be a little harder to get immediate results, you’ll see results for grants 6 months to 2 years later, and for estate planning, it may be 10 years down the road, but they will be significant.

4. Development Director (to oversee the whole process, and to be in charge of major gifts)
The main skillset for this position should be tracking projects and donors, emotional intelligence and managing people, and persuasive writing and speaking.
The main goal of this position should be to act personable and calmly no matter what the disaster, to help the whole team get excited about fundraising, to help them understand that every no leads to a yes, because fundraising is a volume business, and work to make the director and board members aware of major givers in the community that they may have a connection to, rehearse and facilitate the connections, the visits to your facility, and the ask. This person should also monitor new fundraising fields, such as text message fundraising, hybrid nonprofits, etc.
Metrics should be how many people are in your major gifts portfolio, how many visits were successful, major gifts money raised, and amount of money raised by your team.

Each of the top positions can be broken into two positions.

If you are a Board member, Executive Director or Development Director, ask yourself, is it time to re-write some job descriptions? Is it time to offer some professional development opportunities, such as an estate planning course or a web design/user interface design course?

Have you ever done a phone-a-thon?

Fundraising Calculator Says: A Phone-a-thon will give you a 5% return. So 5% of the people you call will actually give you money.

Fundraising is a volume game however, so the more people you call, the more people will eventually give to you.

Here’s your free PDF on “How to Find a Fundraising Job, FAST!”

You can look forward to new tips and tricks every week on how to fundraise better for your cause.

Whether your cause is animals, hunger, the environment, healthy relationships, or policy change, there will be something here for you.

Recent posts have included: “How to get sponsorship for your event,” (a post worth thousands in itself!) “How to measure if your nonprofit marketing is working, (Good for those board reports!) and “5 tips for getting rid of interview jitters.

I love emailing you, but I’d like to hear from you too. Leave a comment, join us on the forum, or email me. I want to know what you think, and how I can improve this blog.

Sincerely,

Mazarine
Wild Woman Fundraising