The best fundraisers relish the ask

By Farrell Associates — B Corp-certified sustainability & ESG recruitment specialists

If you ask a candidate for a non-profit chief executive role how they feel about fundraising at the moment, nearly all of them will tell you they are comfortable with it. The same is true when I speak to partners being considered for an impact fund that is about to raise its second vehicle, and to founders and commercial leaders at venture-backed companies heading into another round.

Comfortable is a reasonable answer. It is also the answer I have learned to look beyond, because in the current market it tends to describe someone who has made their peace with the hardest part of the job rather than someone who will thrive in it.

Why raising money feels so hard right now

The decade of near-zero interest rates made capital unusually easy to come by. That period ended some time ago, and although rates have come down from their peak, money has not felt cheap for a while. When investors and donors can earn a decent return simply by waiting, every request for capital has to work harder.

The effect shows up differently depending on where you sit. In venture capital, new commitments have concentrated heavily in the largest managers, and smaller and first-time funds are finding it slow going while investors wait for cash to come back from earlier vintages. Impact fund managers face the same institutional caution, often with the added task of explaining their impact case to allocators who are under their own pressure to justify it. Founders feel it at the other end, with longer processes and more diligence for each round.

Non-profits feel it most personally. Foundations are stretched across more causes, individual giving is sensitive to household budgets, and corporate partners are more cautious about long commitments. A grant that would once have renewed with a short conversation can now take months of work, and may not renew at all.

The common thread is that it takes more conversations, more patience and more resilience to raise the same amount of money. For most of the people I speak to, that is simply tiring. It is a draining part of the job, and I think it is honest of them to say so.

Three different roles with the same problem

On the surface, a charity executive director, a founding partner of an impact fund and the chief executive of a growing climate technology company have little in common. Their boards look different, their funders want different things and they are measured in different ways.

Underneath, at this point in the cycle, the core of each job is the same. The organisation needs money it does not yet have, from people who are under no obligation to provide it, and the leader is the person most responsible for getting it. Whatever the job title says, a large share of their time will be spent preparing for, having and following up on conversations in which they ask for capital.

That is why I think the hiring question is the same too. It is less about whether the person has raised money before, though that matters, and more about how they feel when they do it.

Relishing the ask and tolerating it

When I talk about someone who relishes fundraising, I do not mean a natural salesperson or someone who enjoys being in front of a room. Some of the best fundraisers I have met are quiet, careful people. What they share is that the process gives them energy rather than taking it away.

They are curious about the people they are asking. They enjoy working out what a particular foundation, family office or pension fund is really trying to achieve, and finding the honest overlap with their own organisation. A refusal interests them, because it tells them something. They keep in touch with the people who said no, and a surprising number of those people say yes later on. They tend to have more relationships in play than seems reasonable, because they have learned that fundraising is a matter of volume as much as of brilliance.

Someone who tolerates fundraising can be very good at it in short bursts. They will prepare thoroughly, present well and close the occasional large gift or commitment. But they experience each round as a cost, and over time that cost accumulates. In a difficult market the cost is higher, the rounds are longer, and the gap between the two kinds of leader widens.

How we look for it in a search

You will rarely find this out by asking someone directly whether they enjoy fundraising. Almost everyone has a thoughtful answer prepared, and most people genuinely believe what they are saying.

What helps is asking about specific moments and listening carefully to the detail. I want to know what they did the last time a core funder or investor fell away, and how quickly they started rebuilding. I ask how many funder or investor relationships they were personally responsible for at one time, and how many of those they had originated themselves rather than inherited. I ask them to talk me through a no that they eventually turned into a yes, and I pay attention to whether they describe the other person with interest or with frustration.

I also watch for what happens to their energy when the conversation moves on to the subject. Some candidates become more animated and specific. Others become a little more general and a little more careful. Neither reaction is decisive on its own, but over the course of a search the pattern is usually clear.

References help as well, particularly from people who have funded the candidate or decided not to. A funder who turned someone down and still speaks warmly about them is telling you something valuable.

Being honest with candidates about the job

Boards can make this harder than it needs to be. It is common to see a role described in terms of strategy, vision and leadership, with fundraising mentioned once under external relations. Candidates then arrive expecting a different job from the one they will actually do.

I would always encourage a board to be explicit about how much of the role will be spent raising money over the first two or three years, and to say roughly where that money is expected to come from. The candidates who relish it will be drawn to that honesty. The ones who would only tolerate it will often rule themselves out, which saves everyone a difficult year.

Thinking past the hire

The harder question, and the one I find boards rarely discuss in enough depth, is what happens when the funding environment improves.

Cycles do turn. When capital becomes easier to raise, the emphasis of a leadership role shifts towards making the organisation work: building the team, putting systems in place, delivering programmes or products well, and making sure growth sticks. The leader who was exactly right for a period of scarcity can find that the next phase asks for different things, and some of them will find it a good deal less engaging.

There is no perfect answer to this, but I think there are a few sensible approaches.

The first is to look for appetite for fundraising combined with genuine curiosity about how organisations run. Some people are energised by both the external work and the internal machinery, and they tend to adapt well as the balance between the two changes. They are not common, which is part of why these searches take care.

The second is to design the leadership team around the person. A chief executive who relishes raising money is often at their best alongside a strong chief operating officer or finance director who relishes running things. Many of the most effective non-profits and fund managers I know work this way, and it allows each person to spend most of their time on the work that suits them.

The third is simply to talk about it openly at the point of appointment. If a board expects the role to look different in three years, it is far better to say so and to discuss how the new leader might grow into that, or how the team might change around them, than to discover the mismatch later.

An open question

I do not think anyone gets this balance exactly right. Hiring purely for today risks appointing someone who loses interest when conditions ease, and hiring purely for an imagined future risks appointing someone who cannot get the organisation there.

So the question I would put to any board or investment committee starting a search for a fundraising-heavy role is whether they are hiring for the funding environment they have now, or the one they expect to have in three years, and whether they have been explicit with each other about which it is.

If you are working through that question for a chief executive, executive director, fund partner or investor relations role, I am always happy to talk it through. You can also see the roles we are currently working on.

FAQ

What should a board look for when hiring a CEO who needs to fundraise? Look for evidence that the candidate draws energy from fundraising rather than simply being able to do it. Ask about specific moments, such as how they responded when a major funder or investor withdrew, how many relationships they originated themselves, and how they turned a refusal into a later commitment. References from funders, including those who declined, are particularly useful.

Why is fundraising harder for non-profits, impact funds and startups at the moment? Interest rates are well above the near-zero levels of the 2010s, so investors and donors have more attractive alternatives and take longer to commit. In venture capital, new money has concentrated in the largest managers while investors wait for returns from earlier funds. Foundations and corporate partners are spread across more causes and more cautious about long commitments.

How do you tell whether a candidate enjoys fundraising or just tolerates it? Asking directly rarely works, because most candidates have a considered answer. It is more revealing to ask for detailed accounts of real fundraising situations and to notice whether the candidate becomes more specific and energised or more general and guarded as the conversation moves on to the subject.

What happens to a fundraising-focused CEO role when the funding market improves? The emphasis usually shifts towards operations: building the team, systems and delivery. Boards can prepare for this by hiring someone curious about both fundraising and running the organisation, by pairing the chief executive with a strong operational or finance lead, or by discussing openly at appointment how the role is likely to change.