Industry: Higher Education Philanthropy

Organization: Urban Campus Research University (UCRU)

Department: Development and Alumni Relations

Change Effort: Succession planning and staff advancement

Size of the Institution: ten thousand employees

Size of Development and Alumni Relations: Two hundred fifty employees

Annual Fundraising: $250,000,000

Alumni body: 350,000 living alumni worldwide

Mission: The mission of Development and Alumni Relations is to deepen the engagement of alumni and friends through philanthropy and ongoing educational, career development, and volunteer opportunities. Alumni and friends of the university are spread around the globe with active communities in Asia, the Middle East, and the United States. The university is a top-rated private urban research university with an alumni population of over three hundred forty thousand alumni.

Values: The department values a traditional hierarchical structure. It believes in supporting education and research through philanthropy and encourages its employees to support their own philanthropic causes. 

Tenure of employees: According to an internal document:

• 22 of the 231 (10%) have been here more than 10 years
• 64% of staff have not reached the 5 years milestone

Organization chart: 

Org chart 2020

Experience with change:

One year ago the university completed its first capital campaign which raised $1.8 billion dollars. Few institutions have achieved this feat and even fewer have done it with their first campaign. 

At the conclusion of the campaign, a new Sr. Vice President of Development and Alumni Relations was hired to take over for the outgoing Sr. VP. The woman who was hired was hired from within the organization. 

One of her initiatives was to begin making the department more diverse. This followed the initiative of the University by ensuring equal pay across the board based on position, time in the field, and how the role compares to other roles within fundraising and comparable roles outside in the for-profit world. 

A culture change consultant was hired to begin the conversation around diversity in the workplace. The organization is slowing embracing the idea of more diversity. The second step that leadership has taken is to hire a woman Vice President to fill the vacancy left by the Sr. VP. For an organization that is slow to change, we are beginning to witness pieces of it, which has provided hope for future change.

Background

According to a report published by the City of Boston, “Boston is home to thirty-five colleges, universities, and community colleges that provide direct employment to 64,800 jobs” (March 2011). There are thirty-six universities within the city limits of Boston and Cambridge, MA. Talent moves from one organization to another in order to move up the ladder and make more money. A member of the talent team said recently, “Like everyone else, the only way to make more money and grow in your career is to move from institution to institution” (Anonymous, personal communication May 1, 2020).

It’s been noted that talent moves from one organization to another when a new campaign is initiated due to an expanded budget and personal need to support the increased demand for acquiring new donors, engaging more alumni, and supporting the increased processing of donations, technology support, and marketing efforts. 

“A report from the Center for American Progress found that turnover can cost as much as 213% of a lost employee’s salary. That means an expert frontline fundraiser earning $120,000 can carry a replacement price tag of $255,600” (para. 5). 

A study conducted by the Association of Fundraising Professionals (AFP) discovered that 97% of fundraisers are satisfied with their current organization, those who leave do so for three primary reasons which are: 

• 37 percent are dissatisfied or very dissatisfied with opportunities for advancement;
• 32 percent are dissatisfied or very dissatisfied with compensation and benefits package; and
• 25 percent say there is insufficient staff to do the fundraising work at their organization.

In 2019 the university completed an assessment of job categorization. Job titles, compensation, years of experience, management level, and many other internal comparisons were made to ensure that there is equality across the university on all job levels and grades. New job grade levels were instituted and an initiative to ensure that compensation is the same across the gender divide. In addition to looking at internal job categories, the university looked at job titles and roles outside of the university that is commensurate with similar roles within. Since then, the university has begun to institute changes that make it more competitive with the higher education job sector. 

Coinciding with the change effort put forth through Human Resources, the president of the university established a task force to look at Alumni Relations and its current impact on alumni, the departments across the university that are impacted by the alumni. The ran a competitive analysis against associations of similar sizes and created a vision for the way the university will engage with, support, and promote it’s 350,000 alumni. Recommendations were presented to the president and board of trustees which received the green light to move forward in February 2020. 

One of the discoveries that came from the task force is that the number of staff supporting the size of the association is very low compared to peer institutions. The recommendations presented by the task force and accepted by the trustees is to increase staff size so that it falls within the mid-range of peer institutions. This change effort in direct response to the task force recommendation of increasing staff size.

The increase in staff will provide an opportunity to create a more robust succession plan which not only will seek to fill vacancies at the top level of the organization but to fill the top three tiers of the organization. In addition to developing current staff to fill the top tiers, the organization must prepare to fill the vacancies which they leave behind by developing more junior level staff. 

Sept 20, 2020, was the last day that the previous Sr. Vice President was in his role. The organization had one year to fill his vacancy, which was done through a national search, finally ending with the selection and promotion of an internal candidate. After she assumed the role Oct. 1, 2020, her previous position remained vacant for seven months. Had a succession plan been in place, there would have been a swift replacement for her vacancy. There was not. 

This Case Study, while it will require the execution of a number of training programs, is not a training initiative. To create a robust succession plan it will require the support of managers and staff at many levels of the organization. Oduwusi, O. (2018) writes that succession planning  “is a systematic and multi-step process which includes gaining a thorough understanding of the current workforce, envisioning the operating environment that will most likely exist in the future, identifying the competencies needed that will move the company forward to seize those future opportunities and thrive, and developing strategies for building that future workforce.” (p. 3).

OD or Training

Training programs will be developed and used throughout this OD process because of the way that they will support the end goal. As stated by Alsadah, Z., Alkhalaf, A., and Jones, M.C (2018), “training can be very useful to correct knowledge deficits on specific products or concepts but it usually does not create big-picture disruptions in how people work or how an organization functions” (p. 32). As staff is identified for future roles, they will need to work closely with their managers to identify areas of growth so that when positions open that are higher in the organization, or for those new positions that are created, they will have the skills needed to advance into those roles. 

In order for this OD effort to be successful, support will need to be provided by each level of the organization. Managers will need to work with their staff to understand where their staff skills can be bolstered and grown. Together staff and managers can create employee-specific training programs and implement projects that will hone their skills and prepare them for the next level in the organization. Leaders at each level will need to work with HR and senior leaders to create more opportunities and designate new roles needed by the organization to support the recommendations of the task force. Together HR and the senior leadership team will identify the skills, scope, and experience needed to continue to drive the organization towards its goals. Due to the impact that succession planning will have on the organization, it must be worked at all levels making it far more than just the development of skills that are provided through one-off training. In order to see success, the entire organization must get behind the plan and support it at all levels.

Outcome

The end goal will be an organization that can turn first to its staff to fill vacancies. It will know when vacancies are likely to occur (due to retirement, death, turnover, or promotion) and will be prepared to move staff forward and upward into the vacant positions. By implementing a successful succession plan, Development and Alumni Relations will retain strong and experienced talent, it will create internal opportunities for growth thereby boosting employee engagement and morale, it will retain staff who have relationships with donors of all levels, and will further position the department to be competitive within the industry.

References

AFP. (2019, July 17). 2019 Compensation and benefits report: Fundraising salaries continued to increase in 2018, with most fundraisers satisfied with their position (U.S. data). AFP. https://afpglobal.org/2019-compensation-and-benefits-report-fundraising-salaries-continued-increase-2018-most-fundraisers

City of Boston. (2011, March). Boston by the numbers, colleges and universities. Retrieved from http://www.bostonplans.org/getattachment/1770c181-7878-47ab-892f-84baca828bf3?forcedefault=true

Jones, C.M., & Rothwell, W.J. (2017) Evaluatingorganizationdevelopment: How to ensure and sustain the successful transformation. Taylor and Francis Group.

Nevez, D. (2020, February 24). Hiring and keeping high-performing fundraisers. Campbell and Company. https://www.campbellcompany.com/news/hiring-retaining-nonprofit-fundraisers

Oduwusi, O., O., (2018) Succession planning as a key to effective managerial transition process in corporate organizations. American Journal of Management Science and Engineering. Vol. 3 (1), 1-6. https:doi: 10.11648/j.ajmse.20180301.11