Don’t Tell The Donor

An Honest Critique Of The Fundraising Conference Circuit

By “A Fundraiser …”

I will never forget the first fundraising conference I ever attended.  It was energizing to be surrounded by hundreds of passionate fundraisers from a wide range of nonprofit groups who were eager to share their successes and failures. The experience convinced me that this was a profession where I could spend my career learning and growing while helping a great cause.

Unfortunately, some of my recent conference experiences have been underwhelming. In fact, after one particularly boring conference, a colleague told me that the old adage must be true, “those that can – do; those that can’t – attend conferences.”

The truth is that I'm not one of those people who tries to argue that we as fundraisers are too busy raising money for the urgent and critical work of our respective organizations to take two or three days out of the office and spend valuable resources to attend a conference.

I remain optimistic that a vibrant conference circuit is the best avenue to provide continuing education to fundraisers. Our fast-paced industry benefits from bringing creative and innovative thinkers together to learn new tactics and meet new leaders.

The legal and medical professions believe so strongly in continuing education that they mandate a certain number of CLE or CME credits to maintain their licenses. It’s easy to understand why. We live in a rapidly changing world and it is a liability to employ staff whose knowledge or expertise stagnates.

However, I sympathize with development directors who might be forced by economic uncertainty to reconsider whether to approve staff requests for what seems like an endless list of upcoming fundraising conferences.

So, what's gone wrong . . . and more importantly, what can be done to strengthen the educational standards of today’s major conferences?

To put it bluntly, conferences suffer when organizers allow uninspired speakers to present stale content to disengaged attendees.

I understand that it is hard to find qualified organizers who can volunteer their time to serve on planning committees. Yet, as a result, the selection process for finding speakers often resembles more of a coercive arm-twisting. Is it any wonder that panels therefore tend to be dominated by vendors with a predisposed interest in making thinly veiled sales pitches for their services?

The easiest way to elevate the quality of speakers is to make the selection process more selective. Rather than simply checking off a mediocre list of standard sessions, organizers need to find a way to make speakers go through an acceptance process. Imagine what would happen if interested speakers had to compete for a limited number of spots. Shifting the paradigm from speaking being viewed as a “favor” to being seen as an “honor” would create a self-perpetuating cycle.

Attendees have a responsibility, too. Conferences are too expensive for fundraising staff to view these events simply as social networking events. I suppose if you are in a sales job, these conferences don’t need to offer much more than a chance to cultivate existing relationships and generate new qualified leads. For nonprofits fundraisers, however, the privilege to use donor funds for professional development comes with a duty to be prepared and engaged.

Too often I’ve seen fundraisers arrive at a conference without having spent enough time preparing for what they hope to achieve. If you are planning on going to conference, you need to invest the time in researching potential sessions you wish to attend. If you are a supervisor being asked to authorize a staff request to travel to a seminar or event -- I think it is your responsibility to challenge the staff member to justify why the cost is worth it and what the person hopes to learn.

Finally, I challenge organizers to use the untapped potential of technology in more conference planning and follow-up. I know I’m a little biased, but why aren’t more bloggers given media credentials to cover events in real time? Why aren’t all those PowerPoint slideshows archived electronically for attendees to read prior to (and after) each conference? Why don’t we encourage the Direct Marketing Association, the Association of Fundraising Professionals, the Council For Advancement and Support of Education and the Nonprofit Technology Network to use upload video and audio from presentations?

I suppose there could be some people reading this who are feeling awfully defensive after having put in lots of hard work for recent conferences. Yet, none of this should be interpreted as controversial. At the end of the day, it’s hard to make money on conferences for nonprofits and there will always be limitations. We as a community will only get out what we are willing to put in… I’m just trying to convince us to put a helluva lot more in.

*Editor’s Note: Don’t Tell The Donor is one of the hottest blogs in the sector. It’s written anonymously because the author is well known in the sector and he/she/its bosses wouldn’t be pleased. Be assured, The NonProfit Times knows the author’s identity, at least enough to write the check. You’re going to have to trust us.