LUNCHEON - The 18-Month Syndrome

SPEAKER

Professional fundraisers, especially as directors of development, bounce from nonprofit to nonprofit with shorter tenure than professionals in other nonprofit C-level positions.  This is costly to our employers, upsetting to donors in a relationship-based world, and can impair the careers of fundraising professionals whose resumés spell “job-hopper.”  This is a huge problem.  Bob Fisher, former CEO of The San Francisco Foundation and a guru in our profession, was a pioneer in professionalizing advancement starting in the 1960s.  As a fundraising CEO, Bob has won AFP’s highest awards, and can guide our conversation with a half-century of experience.  Today he is President of Rusher Loscavio Fisher Nonprofit Executive Search and helps to replace high level fundraising executives and fundraising executive directors.

What can we as development professionals do to improve our tenure and track record?  How can executive directors and CEOs improve their selection of and relationships with their chief development professionals?  Bob will lead the group in a candid and freewheeling discussion of this ongoing – and troubling – pattern in our field.