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| Path: Main Street : NewsWeek : Archive : Leadership in Focus : Article |
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Leadership in Focus: Ken Wyman
By Elisa Birnbaum
July 3, 2007
This month in our Leadership in Focus series we feature Ken Wyman. A tireless consultant with 35 years experience in the world of nonprofit fundraising, Ken has been touted as “one of the world’s best fundraisers.” While running a successful consultancy, Ken is also coordinating the post graduate Fundraising and Volunteer Management program at Humber College for the sixth straight year. He has created and taught academic credit courses on fundraising for a variety of institutions, such as Ryerson Polytechnic University and York University. And he was the first "Outstanding Fundraiser" chosen by his peers at the Association of Fundraising Professionals Greater Toronto Chapter.
CharityVillage: Considering your work at Humber College, you must have a good perspective on the next generation of nonprofit leaders. What do you think are their key traits and how would they compare to those of the current leaders?
Ken Wyman: I think perhaps the most remarkable difference is that they are very intentionally going into the nonprofit world and learning about fundraising right from the beginning. We used to say that nobody set out to be a fundraiser; you went out to solve all the problems and then found out you needed money and backed into that profession. Fundraising was always what you had to do - and perhaps discovered was interesting and fun - but was never an intentionally planned career path. Now I’m finding a remarkable number, 25 to 35 students every year, fresh out of university who are saying they want to study fundraising. They recognize it is as a career path.
Tied in with that, we’re seeing people who see working in philanthropy in general to be their goal whereas, in the past, people would come in because they were passionate about a single issue, whether it was international development or women’s rights or kids or seniors. And certainly a substantial number of people who enter our program do have strong connections with one cause. But there are also a remarkable number who say, “I could see myself working in the arts or social services or health care - all of them sound good.” That, too, is part of the maturing of this profession.
CV: Do you feel technology has a positive effect on fundraising; what are the potential dangers?
More and more charities get involved with instant electronic receipting and thank-yous. The good news is that people get an immediate proof that their donation has been received. The bad news is that people see this as pro forma, but it really doesn’t replace the personal contact. So, where charities have used electronic asks in replacement of personal asks, such as in a workplace where someone says, “I’m getting a team together, will you sponsor me?”, the e-mails are not producing the same responses as going around and talking with people. It’s like when a donor asked me, “I got my thank-you for my donation from the computer; when is my friend going to thank me?” We’re becoming complacent thinking that, because the computer has churned out a thank-you, the job is done. And it is not.
And, although I’m seeing more and more charities using sophisticated database programs to track their donors, I’m not seeing them mining that data very effectively or often enough. All too often, they’re spending thousands of dollars for software and they don’t use it for much more than keeping track of a donor’s name and address and sending out a receipt. I think there’s a whole lot more than can be done, even at the simplest level of personalizing letters - taking out the word “friend” and inserting someone’s name.
CV: What are the other mistakes nonprofits make or challenges they face today with regards to fundraising?
KW: I think one of the issues that continues to be a major concern is donor renewal. We still see far too many nonprofits getting support from a contributor once and not keeping them as a loyal, long term supporter. This is, in part, because we still don’t do a good enough job of thanking people and reporting back to them on how their contribution was spent before we start asking them for more. This is true not only for individual donors; it is even more true for corporations and foundations who complain that even when it is a contractual requirement that they get reports, nonprofits are not bothering to do it. And that’s a very serious thing.
The other big mistake is that while charities have become a lot more conscious of the mega gift, a lot of charities, particularly grassroots organizations who aren’t going to get the ten million dollar mega gift, are missing the very substantive mid-level gifts. They may be doing okay at the mass market, way better than they used to at monthly giving, and some are doing very well at mega gifts. But, not enough attention is paid to the thousand dollar or ten thousand dollar level of giving where many charities have people on that list who could afford to move up to that level. But they are not being attended to.
CV: What can they do to avoid this problem?
KW: It certainly would mean moving beyond technology, beyond direct mail. It does require personal connections. It involves making phone calls, going to visit somebody, bringing them in and chatting with them and writing them truly personal letters...not personalized letters.
Another key issue that is on my mind, which brings me back to why I’m spending my time at Humber in addition to the ongoing consulting I do, is that fundraising has become a lot more complex. When I joined the profession, there were no courses to take. You had to learn by the seat of your pants and make some mistakes along the way. Charities have much less margin of error, much greater accountability; we can’t afford to learn by making mistakes. And it disturbs me that there are still many people entering this profession who don’t have formal training. And, yes, there are more resources they can rely on; they can go to an AFP conference, look things up at CharityVillage and those things are tremendously valuable, but the legal requirements, the ethical complexities are so much more difficult than they were.
Far more people ought to be getting formal training and employers really do themselves a disservice when they hire people without it. We’re at the type of transition that the medical profession was at about 100 years ago, when anyone could hang out their shingle and say there were a doctor. But then medical schools started becoming formally recognized. I think that within a decade it will be difficult, if not impossible, to become a fundraiser unless you have formal training. I think that we will also see greater expectations from board members to take training so that they, too, know what they’re doing.
Certainly, as we approach 100,000 charities in Canada, competition becomes a challenge and there’s an expectation for greater accountability. Everyone wants to know that their money is well spent. And just because someone has cancer doesn’t necessarily mean they are qualified to be on the board of a cancer charity. Nor does the fact that they are the executive of a major corporation qualify them to be on the board of a major charity.
CV: What is the one thing you know today about being a good fundraiser that you wish you knew when you started out?
KW: One of the biggest things I have learned and wish I knew was the importance of following up with mid-sized donors and getting a volunteer involved. Thirty-five years ago, when I was fundraising for Oxfam and we got a five thousand dollar gift from a ‘dear friend’ through direct mail, I was dancing around the office, really pleased at how effective our direct mail campaign was. What I didn’t know - and it took me years to figure out - was that a five thousand dollar gift through the mail was a sign of a potentially much larger gift. And instead of immediately getting a board member to phone that donor and going to visit the donor and doing the prospect research, we just sent the donor some more ‘dear friend’ letters. We missed opportunities for what could have potentially have been fifty thousand and five hundred thousand dollar gifts.
It’s about thinking bigger and thinking differently and not allowing the systematic techniques that work for mass market to keep us so busy that we don’t have time for the exceptional few donors who require a personal touch.
CV: What traits do you think make a leader great?
KW: Well, first of all, there’s an interest and willingness to spend time on issues far beyond your immediate career. It’s taking time to write stories, do research, pull together a book, do presentations at AFP, even if it doesn’t immediately result in you getting paid more. And thinking beyond a single incident and saying, “well I just ran a special event that was amazing and now I’m going to go and do a presentation.” But going and doing some research to find the principals that have applied to a dozen special events. One of my great frustrations in the profession is that far too often we still learn based on anecdotes on one or two experiences and we’re nowhere near scientific research where we conduct experiments to find out effectively what works.
CV: What is your leadership style or philosophy?
KW: I’m not sure I adopt styles intentionally but, in a recent article about emotional intelligence by Daniel Goleman in the Harvard Business Review, there was an analysis of some different leadership styles. And I can clearly recognize that, of the six styles they talk about, I lean toward the affiliative style - putting people first - and the coaching style, trying to help people develop skills for the long term.
I think, in general, one of the issues that we need to do in developing leaders is to talk beyond technical training as fundraisers to leadership training. It’s about knowing what leadership styles exist and to practice using them and to develop skills in using techniques that may not come naturally to you.
Elisa Birnbaum is a freelance print and broadcast journalist living in Toronto.
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