As the new financial year approaches, many of us will have been involved in target-setting. If you’re lucky, you’ll have had a say in the final figures. If you’re not, they’ll have been imposed with minimal discussion.

I’ve noticed a concerning tendency among some of my fellow – and mostly female – fundraisers. Online and during casual chats at conferences, I encounter negativity about targets. They’re seen as impossible, idealistic, unreachable goals. GIFs are circulated depicting variations on a theme of ostriches hiding their heads in the sand.

This, to me, points to a worrying sense of helplessness. Complaining perpetuates this negative cycle and changes nothing.

Why are targets so often unrealistic?

Many others have written excellent pieces outlining the reasons why unrealistic targets are imposed on fundraisers:

• Budgets are based on what’s needed, rather than what the portfolio can realistically deliver;
• Excellent performance in one year is “punished”, resulting in a demand to improve by 10% or 20%, regardless of the circumstances;
• The ignorance of non-fundraising senior management plays a significant role.

I would add one more reason which I haven’t seen addressed in any fundraising articles/blog posts: middle management which fails to challenge unrealistic goals, instead unreasonably pushing the pressure down to their team.

Harvard Business Review published a very incisive piece on this issue last year, highlighting that “Too few managers have the courage or the wherewithal to do anything but roll over when their boss hands them an astronomically high number.” That’s harsh, but based on experiences earlier in my career, and accounts I’ve heard from others, it’s as equally applicable to the charity sector as it is to the industries that HBR usually covers.

What has this got to do with feminism?

Women are socially conditioned, far more than men, to be acquiescent. Given the over-representation of women in the fundraising workforce, it seems inevitable that this conditioning has affected our organisational cultures.

Fundraising departments often have a culture of “niceness” which generally means that people are pleasant and friendly. There’s nothing wrong with that. However, the flip-side can be an aversion to conflict and healthy debate, which means that issues fester beneath the surface and avoidable problems aren’t anticipated.

It’s therefore probably unfair to place so much of the blame on the middle managers. In order to resist unrealistic goals, they have to fight against their own social conditioning (if they are women), and an organisational culture that’s hostile to open challenge and debate. I know how awkward that feels because I’ve done it. I’ve felt in the past as if sometimes this type of behaviour means I’ve been perceived as a “troublemaker” whereas in other cultures it would be seen as perfectly healthy.

I’d rather take that label, however, than let my team down by giving them goals that I know are impossible. The other benefit of having these experiences, and speaking openly and frankly about them when job-seeking, is that it’s enabled me to find an employer with a healthy and sensible attitude to target-setting.

Fundraisers, we need to resist the culture of bad targets

There are many, many reasons why this culture of unrealistic targets needs to stop:

• It’s bad for your own career. Failing to negotiate a realistic number means you’ll never achieve the track record of achieving targets that appears as a requirement on virtually every fundraising job ad that I’ve ever seen.
• If you’re a manager, it erodes your authority. A formal job title as “manager” isn’t enough to run a successful team. You need to ensure your employees trust you and believe you have their best interests at heart, as well as the organisation’s – especially if you want to keep your best staff.
• Impossible targets encourage unethical behaviour. The aforementioned HBR article explains how these unhealthy cultures led to scandals such as Wells Fargo. We’ve got plenty of our own scandals in the charity sector that are probably caused, at least in part, by a relentless push towards unrealistic income targets. As our sector continues to experience intense (and justified) scrutiny, we need to consider and avoid the unintended consequences of our internal cultures.
• It stymies genuine relationship fundraising. Most of us know how fundraising should be done: it’s based on long-term relationships built through trust. It can take many, many years to secure a transformational gift. However, pressure to achieve the big money “now” leads to a desperate scrabbling around for “quick wins” and the long-term important but non-urgent work to build these vital relationships never gets off the ground.

How should we move forward?

I hope that other fundraisers – those who might be drawn towards complaining, and especially the women among us – will be motivated to make a real change.

• If you’re a junior fundraiser, scrutinise your target. Think about how you are going to meet it and make a plan. If you are unsure about any part of it, have a discussion with your manager. They should be able to help you understand how you have a reasonable chance of meeting it.
• If you are a department manager, make sure you can give your team this confidence. If you can’t, have this same discussion with your manager. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t challenge your team if you think their proposed figures are too low, but you need to be able to distinguish between reasonable and unreasonable pressure.
• When job seeking, ask how targets are set, and whether staff have a say in them. When going for interviews myself, I found this question to be extremely illuminating. One charity avoided answering the question directly. If more fundraisers ask this question, more employers will see that they need to give a good answer in order to compete for talent.

It should be possible to have these discussions while maintaining a high standard of professionalism. After all, reasonable targets are in the best interests of your organisation.

I don’t mean this to give the impression that I think targets are inherently a bad thing. I love having a target! When used correctly, it’s a brilliant motivational tool that can also help a fundraiser track their progress and impact. But there is an important difference between the budgeted figure which finance relies on in order to allocate expenditure, and the “dream” stretch target. Don’t confuse the latter with the former.

The lack of diversity in fundraising is receiving increased attention. Thank goodness: it’s holding back the charity sector in many ways which we probably haven’t fully appreciated.

Fundraising also has a talent shortage which, in my view, goes hand in hand with the diversity problems. It’s incredibly difficult to find good fundraisers, especially at senior level. This also leads to a host of other problems, such as job-hopping; it’s easy to be tempted away to a new charity after a couple of years if you have lots of options. This means that charities rarely benefit from the long-term, sustained relationships that are vital in fundraising.

I’ve met many people, however, who would love the opportunity to work for a charity and change the world, but can’t find a way in (I’ve found other anecdotal evidence of this – for example the comments on Leon Ward’s Guardian article – but no broader evidence; I’d be fascinated to see any studies on this subject if they’re available).

My personal experience

I’m not sure how much has changed since I graduated in 2006, spent a successful year as a street fundraiser, then struggled to find any paid opportunities to progress in the sector. Instead I moved to the private sector for a few years, which gave me the necessary experience to move into a trust fundraising role.

My years in the private sector weren’t wasted: I gained valuable skills such as bid-writing, but it seems a shame that charities’ doors were essentially shut on me. I could have raised a lot more money for charity in those intervening years if given a chance. And I’m a white middle-class woman with a Cambridge degree who had a year’s relevant experience. If I found it difficult, what chance do those without my privilege have?

It seems absolutely mad that we need more talented people, and so many want to work for us, but we make it virtually impossible for them to help us achieve our missions.

Unpaid internships are still too common

There are far too many barriers to entering charities – especially fundraising and comms roles – for anyone without a certain level of financial privilege.

One of the most pervasive forms of discrimination is the prevalence of unpaid internships. What’s more, many paid entry level roles in charity require experience, therefore implying that these internships are a mandatory step.

This is a subject that’s gaining increased attention and there are some signs of improvement: a quick search of Charityjob indicated several enlightened charities advertising internships paying a decent wage.

However, when I turned to the “volunteering” section of the site, my heart sank. Many were genuine volunteering opportunities, but it wasn’t hard to find the less positive examples.

Look at this role description for a “Trust and Statutory Fundraising Intern” from a major charity that you’ve definitely heard of.

• Supporting Fundraisers in the development of effective appeals, reports, proposals and updates aimed at Trusts and Statutory bodies, to raise income for the [charity’s] work.
• Undertaking qualitative and quantitative secondary research to identify charitable trusts and statutory bodies that might have the potential to support the [charity].
• Keeping information up to date on our fundraising database.
• Assisting with a mailing programme to donors.
• Providing timely feedback and reports to donors, including creation and delivery of thank you messages by mail.

I have hired people to do a virtually identical job, the only substantial difference being that the role I manage pays a salary. What’s the difference between the two positions? Why should one be paid and one not?

I also picked out the following telling phrases from “volunteer” adverts, all with the word “intern” in the job title, and all from relatively well-known charities (my comments follow each one):

“almost all the charity’s paid staff began as interns or on a pro bono basis.”

• This is a charity that has intentionally limited its talent pool to those who can afford to work for free.

“our volunteer-based approach helps keep overheads low so that as much funding as possible can go to our projects”

• Overheads are a fact of life. If donors won’t pay for them, someone else has to. In this case, it’s the “volunteers” who are bearing the weight of these costs. It doesn’t feel so good to boast about low overheads if you consider that the people in your organisation with the least power are the reason, does it?

“Some weekend and evening work may be required, with Time Off In Lieu (TOIL) available.”

• I really, really hope this was a mistake. This statement does not belong on a volunteer ad. And if it was an error, it doesn’t say much about this charity’s commitment to caring for and developing its “volunteers”.

Many of the adverts I read were accompanied by diversity statements. How ironic.

Charities are exploiting the volunteering loophole

Volunteering is a vital and invaluable aspect of charity and should be encouraged. Because of this, I also think it’s impossible to legislate against unpaid internships in the charity sector. But I also think that if we’re honest with ourselves we know the difference: where does the power lie in the relationship? Is the volunteer desperate to get on the first rung of the career ladder? Or is it someone seeking to give back in their spare time?

Ultimately, there’s a very simple test to identify whether a charity “volunteer” should be paid: if you offered them a salary, would they accept it? (I think this hypothetical question has more depth to it than simply considering the offer of money. A salaried position comes with a host of responsibilities that many volunteers would prefer not to take on.)

Unpaid internships are a false economy – and this affects our ability to build relationships with donors

Compare the “Trust and Statutory Fundraising Intern” role to an identical, but paid position. Which is more likely to lead to better donor relationships for the charity, and ultimately more income? The short-term, unpaid post with a revolving door of new starters, all from similarly privileged backgrounds? Or the longer-term, more stable position with an employee who can afford to live independently, can take on more responsibility and is more likely to be loyal to the charity?

What can we do about it?

The diversity problems in fundraising are multi-faceted and complex. I have only addressed one small aspect of it in this blog post. However, there are many practical steps that organisations can take to remove some of the entry barriers and improve the situation for themselves and for the sector. It’s not just the right thing to do ethically; it makes real business sense.

• Managers need to commit to finding and developing talented people: these may be young graduates or school-leavers, or older workers making a career transition. The role in question could take the form of an apprenticeship, a paid internship, or simply an entry-level post. Yes, training inexperienced people takes time and effort, but I’ve found that employees appreciate and remember the trust, belief and support provided. Charities that can “grow their own” talent can avoid recruitment agency fees, inspire loyalty and avoid high turnover.
• Senior managers need to support their team to do this: finding and developing staff is time-consuming, but must be prioritised, no matter how busy the manager’s workload.
• Charity recruitment agencies should do more to find talented, passionate people with the aptitude but not necessarily direct charity experience. There could be a gap in the market for an agency with more diverse candidates that represent the full spectrum of human experience. However, in order to do this the agencies need to know that there’s a business case for it: that charities will take on people who don’t have direct experience and commit to training and supporting them. We need to provide the demand.
• Keep arguing for overheads: these are costs that literally keep the lights on, and ensure we can pay all staff fairly. We need to stop the overheads “race to the bottom” and give donors better ways of assessing our effectiveness, such as proper impact measures.
• We need a coordinated sector effort to halt unpaid internships. Perhaps sector membership bodies could have a requirement for all organisational members to abandon unpaid internships and commit to finding new talent in more equitable ways.

We struggle to find good talent and have all the disadvantages of a homogeneous workforce, and yet there are countless people out there who would love to work with us if given the opportunity. Are we committed to our missions? Do we really want to change the world? We can’t do it unless we have the right workforce. And we certainly don’t have it yet.