Hire Well, Train Quickly

Hire Well, Train Quickly

Jan. 3, 2006

By Abny Santicola, associate editor, FundRaising Success

As the government steps away from the business of providing social services, society is attempting to fill the void with more and more new nonprofit organizations. And as the number of nonprofits grows, so too does the number of positions available within the nonprofit sector.

That's an encouraging trend for 2006. But according to Tom Ahern, founder of Foster, R.I.-based consultancy Ahern Communications and author of "Raising More Money With Newsletters Than You Ever Thought Possible," many of the people hired to fill those positions don't have a lot of professional experience and have limited understanding of certain crucial aspects, such as marketing.

"So you have a thin veneer of people who are extremely good at what they do, [but] the bulk of the practitioners are not particularly well trained," Ahern says, adding that reasons for the situation include:

• Salaries. Entry-level nonprofit jobs don't normally pay very well.
• Low expectations. "Nobody expects someone to be extraordinarily skilled if you're not paying them a lot of money," Ahern says.
• Background. Many people in entry-level positions at nonprofit organizations come from all sorts of backgrounds and have no idea what to do with degrees in subjects such as sociology. As a result, their motivation is more idealistic (to do something good in the world) than professional.

Hiring well and ramping up new employees quickly needs to be a major goal for nonprofits, since competition for the donor dollar is growing, he adds.

"It's a very competitive environment now for giving, and it is also an environment where people are tuning out faster," Ahern explains. "They sort their mail at hyper speed, and things hit the trash much more quickly.

"The difficulty of getting someone's attention, making your case and raising money is just going to get harder and harder," he adds. "I think the grassroots people are going to have a very tough time finding a donor base and developing that donor base, just because they're going to get washed out in all the noise.

"If you don't have the skills to break through that -- and that means marketing skills and some training in advertising and direct mail and other things -- you just can't compete," he concludes.

Ahern can be reached by visiting http://www.aherncomm.com