The “7 F’s”: Attributes of a Healthy Fundraising EnvironmeNT

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Culture eats strategy for breakfast - Peter Drucker. 

Your fundraising strategy is critical. But your fundraising team culture is the environment your strategy lives and breathes in. And if that environment is toxic, if it’s overgrown with invasive “weeds” you never wanted there, or if it’s haphazardly built (rather than intentionally with knowing purpose), your strategy will be starved of air and unable to thrive. 

What kind of a culture do you want within your development department? Any right answer to that question will be informed by a mixture of ambition and reality. What I mean by that is that if you’re overly ambitious, you’ll risk your vision never coming to fruition. But if you’re overly focused on reality and the circumstantial challenges in front of you (because those are always there), you’ll aspire to create a culture that few want to be a part of and that slogs ahead like it’s walking through a swamp anyway. 

With each passing year of leading fundraising teams, we began to become aware of characteristics of the happiest, healthiest, and most effective fundraising teams. They were both ambitious and grounded in reality. As time went on, 7 key characteristics were highlighted in our minds as the most common and the most crucial. And to boot, we were even able to organize them with alliteration! They are our “Seven F’s”, which have effectively served us and many client partners. 

Before hiring a new fundraiser, we believe it is important to explain the environment - The Seven F’s - that they would find if offered a position to join the development team. Encourage prospective hires to think honestly about whether this is the fundraising culture that they’re seeking. Candidates should be asked if they understand and can adhere to the work ethic described as follows:

1. Focus - All fundraisers know the challenges of managing the vast amount of detail revolving around good fundraising. There are always lists of things to do, emails and texts to answer, telephone calls to make, visits to schedule and contract reports to be completed. Good fundraisers know how to prioritize and stay focused on the most important things that need to be done in order to achieve the desired fundraising outcomes. A healthy fundraising environment is one in which all team members recognize the need to be able to focus and prioritize their work. 
2. Fast - Whether you like it or not, we live in a very fast-paced world. The expectation is that you will respond quickly to all requests and turn in reports on time. Everyone today expects a quick response to their email, text, phone call and/or any request for information. Fundraisers need to be fast and efficient to be successful. The reality is that you need to be fast in today’s world. Fundraisers in a healthy fundraising environment know that and respond accordingly. 
3. Friendly - “Friendliness” has to do with the various types of relationships and networks that need to be developed with the different constituencies that you deal with every day. There are different relationships that you have with your co-workers than you will have with your donors, prospects, internal leadership, board members, program staff, and your boss, to name just a few. You will need to know instinctively how to develop the right type of relationship with each one of these various audiences. Friendliness also has to do with the ability to network with your colleagues in the fundraising profession, as they will be a great source for learning and growing your professional acumen throughout the years. It almost goes without saying that a fundraising environment must be friendly to be healthy. But it’s so important that we’re saying it anyway. 
4. Flexible - The one thing that we can guarantee is change. The world we live in is not stagnant and neither is fundraising. If you are the kind of person that needs routine, fundraising may not be the right career for you. A healthy fundraising environment is one that encourages embracing the challenge of taking a new idea and making it better. Dealing with ambiguity, shifting ideas/plans requires the fundraiser to be nimble and flexible. 
5. Fundamentals - There is nothing that will hurt your fundraising program more than the simple errors that occur because of carelessness. If you misspell the donor’s name or enter the wrong amount of the donation in the thank you letter, “It will come back to bite you.” You can be sure that the donor will tell 10 others that the work done by the organization is sloppy. You must pay attention to the details and be careful. Good fundraisers pay attention to doing things right, the first time. A healthy and successful fundraising environment simply doesn’t tolerate sloppy work. Learning the fundamentals of fundraising is step one. Taking pride in the quality of executing the details of fundraising fundamentals is step two.
6. Fundraising- When all is said and done, you are not hired to answer emails, nor to go to meetings. You are hired to raise money. Raising money and/or needed resources is the reason why you were hired. Fundraising is to be prioritized above all else. One of the lessons great fundraisers learn early on is that if you raise a lot of money, everyone within the organization will leave you alone. You will also be the beneficiary of praise and appreciation. A healthy fundraising environment, very simply stated, is a fundraising environment. 
7. Fun - The final distinction is to have fun. Don’t pass by this one too quickly and assume it. And don’t think mindless frivolity. You need to have fun while you’re working and in the brief pauses from your work. A healthy fundraising environment is an environment where everyone loves what they do because, among other things, they have fun doing what they do. As fundraisers, we are working much too hard not to enjoy what we are doing.

If you’ve found something within this white paper that you would like to explore further with our team, please contact us.

Claudia A. Looney, FAHP, CFRE

Principal and Managing Partner

claudia@covenantfirm.com

Kyle Houlton, CFRE

President and CEO

kyle@covenantfirm.com

www.covenantfirm.com