Last year I got involved with an interesting validation study, one that asked who is likely to succeed as a nonprofit fundraiser. The question came up when I met David Edell, an associate who had spent 13 years in fundraising and 16 years as a nonprofit search consultant with DRG Inc. in New York City. David had seen firsthand the difficulty nonprofits have in recruiting talented fundraisers. Fundraising seems on the surface like a job that should parallel commercial sales jobs. But in David’s extensive experience, skilled commercial salespeople don’t always make the transition successfully.
I chose the job personality tests published by Hogan Assessment Systems as the testing vehicles for our investigation. I prefer the Hogan instruments for their theoretical premises, rigorous mathematical foundations, and the fact that they don’t discriminate on age, race, or gender.
We approached the question much the same as we would have for any employer who wanted to validate the use of a pre-employment test. The difference was that we were validating a set of characteristics for a common job title within a business sector. We recruited twelve Subject Matter Experts (SMEs), all vice presidents of development, from major nonprofit organizations to create the study.
Our SMEs quickly informed us we needed to define two fundraising jobs in our investigation: Fundraising Generalist and Major Gifts Professionals. Different personality charactertistics and competencies, they felt, may be required to succeed in each of these job titles.
Fundraiser Generalists are responsible for working with volunteers and professionals to conduct special events to raise support from individual supporters and constituent groups.
Major Gift Professionals handle all aspects of marketing, management and administration of activities associated with major donor development.
We used the Hogan Job Environment Tool to evaluate the factors that would make a difference in successful performance of these two jobs. The JET has been shown in other research to provide the link between job demands and the kind of individual who can best perform a job.
Personality Characteristics
Current thinking in personality assessment says that most personality characteristics can be described in terms of five dimensions, referred to in the testing industry as “the Bigs”:
I. Extraversion – outgoing and talkative
II. Agreeableness – warm and pleasant
III. Conscientiousness – rule following
IV. Emotional Stability – calm and composed
V. Openness – creative and open-minded
These are measured on the Hogan instruments in seven scales. (Contact us for more information.) Results showed that that the most important personality characteristics for both Fundraiser Generalist and Major Gifts Professional candidates are associated with high social interaction, social sensitivity, goal achievement, stress tolerance, and vision. The personality profiles for both jobs are similar, although scale scores of Fundraiser Generalist on Adjustment, Ambition, Sociability, and Creative Problem Solving are slightly lower than those of Major Gifts Professional. Major Gift professionals score somewhat higher on Adjustment, Ambition, and Sociability.
For comparison purposes, we looked at a sample of salespeople in three commercial organizations. The corresponding scales for sales people are quite different. Successful commercial sales people have high ambition, self-confidence, and sociability. They have average to high scores for creative problem solving. They have average to low scores for conformity and conscientiousness. They are likely to be highly flexible in their approach to problem-solving.
Competencies
A competency is knowledge, skill, or ability necessary to accomplish a job requirement. We asked the SMEs to rate 62 competencies for both job titles and learned that the top 15 competencies desirable in a Fundraising Generalist differed from those needed by Major Gift Professionals. Tables 1 and 2 show the top five competencies for the two fundraising specialties.
Table 1
Fundraising Generalist
1. Interpersonal Skills
2. Trustworthiness
3. Integrity
4. Written Communication
5. Customer Service
Table 2
Major Gifts Professional
1. Customer Service
2. Achievement Orientation
3. Trustworthiness
4. Interpersonal Skills
5. Oral Communication
In summary, we learned that a personality test can be useful in filling these two fundraising positions. Testing would help a nonprofit organization identify the degree to which individuals possess the charactertistics and competencies needed to succeed in these two job titles.
David Edell and I founded a joint venture, NPEdge LLC, to offer these specialized assessments for nonprofit employers. NPEdge’s JobFit Assessment Profiles for Fundraisers and Major Gifts professionals are the first on-line assessment tools for executives who are responsible for hiring fundraisers. To learn more about David Edell, visit his web site: www.drgnyc.com. To learn more about our joint venture, visit www.jobsnonprofit.com. To learn more about Performance Programs, visit www.performanceprograms.com.
