At the outbreak of COVID-19 in March of 2020, fundraising teams were confronted with empty offices and a sudden shift to Zoom meetings. Gift officers who had only ever met with donors face-to-face had to quickly transition their relationship building and solicitation to a video screen or phone.
Starting in the second half of 2021, there was a gradual shift back to the office, often in hybrid context, where some days were in the office, others were remote. For many organizations in the fundraising industry, hybrid became the norm, but the implementation of hybrid policies varied. Some offices required fundraisers to be in the office on certain days of the workweek or for a certain number of days each week. Others avoided mandating days in the office and gave fundraisers more autonomy around when to be in the office.
By 2024, it seemed hybrid working environments were here to stay. However, this new normal hadn’t been studied for its impact on fundraising. Many fundraising leaders had opinions, even anecdotes, about how hybrid work affected fundraising performance in their teams. But no one seemed to have data to back up those sentiments. We decided to change that.
In-Person vs. Hybrid Work
We (advancement leaders, a consultant, and a researcher) joined forces to conduct a research study to illuminate the industry debate about the merits and challenges of remote vs. in-person vs. hybrid work. Our key question was this: Does a fundraiser’s work location impact their fundraising outcomes? Or, said a different way, does remote, hybrid, or in-office work matter to a fundraiser’s performance? Today, we are sharing the high-level results of our study, with a deeper analysis to be published later this year.
We chose to focus our data collection on advancement programs at academic medical centers and so gathered gift officer metrics and institutional data from multiple organizations across the U.S. We sought data from fiscal year 2023, including de-identified gift officer metrics such as the number of meaningful contacts, the number of solicitations, the number of gifts closed, and the total dollars raised. We also asked for the institutions’ policies around remote and hybrid work, including:
- The number of days a week gift officers spent in the office, on average.
- The policy dictating the days spent in the office—gift officer’s choice or a set schedule.
Analyzing the Fundraising Results
After the end of the 2023 fiscal year, we collected data from across seven institutions, collectively representing approximately 200 gift officers. We turned the various data points into variables and analyzed them using regression modeling to understand the factors that influence fundraising performance. Four models predicting outcomes—one each for contacts, solicitations, gifts closed, and dollars raised—were developed with the same set of variables.
Below is a summary of the data set’s key statistics, based on fundraising data from all participating institutions:
| Variable | Mean | Median |
|---|---|---|
| Number of contacts | 195.7 | 81.0 |
| Number of solicitations | 31.4 | 22.0 |
| Number of closes | 26.1 | 18.0 |
| Total dollars raised | $5,356,670 | $1,864,565 |
| Years at institution | 8.2 | 7.0 |
| Required to be in the office (Y=1) | 0.3 | 0 |
| Est. avg. days staff in the office per week | 2.2 | 2.5 |
| First graduating class | 1863 | 1851 |
| Institutional median gift size | $2,660 | $52 |
| Hospital endowment | $910,000,000 | $840,000,000 |
Using negative binomial regression and clustering by organization, the following factors predicted each outcome at a statistically significant level (*p<.05 **p<.01 ***p<.001):
- More contacts: Required to be in the office weekly, more days a week in the office, lower median institutional gift, lower hospital endowment.
- More solicitations: Required to be in the office weekly, fewer days a week in the office, more recent first graduating class, higher median institutional gift, higher hospital endowment.
- More closes: More years working at an institution, fewer days a week in the office, more recent first graduating class, higher hospital endowment.
- More dollars raised: More years working at an institution, lower median institutional gift, higher hospital endowment.
Our study revealed a few key findings:
- The more days a fundraiser was in the office, the higher the count of their visits.
- More days in the office led to fewer solicitations and closed gifts.
- There was no association between dollars raised and the number of days in the office or requirements to be in the office.
- More institutional experience was key for more dollars raised, not work location or an in-office requirement.
Our Takeaways and the Implications for You
For the first time, our industry has data to inform fundraising leaders who are wrestling with decisions about how to approach work location for their fundraisers. Instead of focusing on how many days a fundraiser is in the office, leaders should consider the following important factors in the fundraising environment.
Location doesn’t matter. Where someone works doesn’t seem to matter in relation to how much they raise. Fundamentally, securing dollars in the door is the job of fundraisers, and it seems that good fundraisers can raise money even if they have the freedom to decide when to work in the office and when to work remotely.
Flexibility matters. Since time in the office doesn’t affect dollars raised, the ability to offer flexibility in the work location could dramatically impact how you recruit and retain employees. If gift officers can be successful working from anywhere, there may be great savings for some organizations operating in high-cost environments, as well as access to a deeper pool of development professionals in a broader geographic region.
Autonomy matters. Forcing people into the office for a certain number of days of the week may not translate into more money raised. While we saw more days in the office leading to more contact reports, more days also lowered the number of solicitations and ultimately didn’t result in more dollars being raised. The pandemic showed that development professionals can work from places other than an office and still successfully raise money.
Mentorship matters. Historically, much of the professional development of fundraisers who are early in their careers has been informal, through joint donor visits and the shadowing of seasoned colleagues. In order to ensure succession planning and professional growth in a hybrid environment, more intentional mechanisms need to be considered to mentor those who are new to the profession.
Technology matters. Technology allows gift officers greater efficiency, such as being able to conduct meetings on Zoom instead of flying across the country for face-to-face meetings. New technological advances require us to rethink how we use technology in ways that can maximize the personalization of gift conversations and take advantage of efficiencies.
It’s About the Culture, Not the Location
Fundraisers were hybrid workers before hybrid working was a thing—since they regularly traveled to see donors, many of their workdays were already spent outside of the office. It seems fundraisers may have been well prepared for the shift to hybrid work, but are their organizations adaptable to new models of work?
Very few fundraising operations returned to full time in office expectations, despite perceived pressure from administrations to return to their pre-pandemic “normal” of five days a week in the office. Additionally, very few organizations shifted to completely remote operations, with no expectation of regular time in the office. Hybrid work options seem to be here to stay.
It is now our job as professionals in the field to ensure that we are setting up fundraisers to be successful. Institutional experience predicts positive outcomes in fundraising. This study indicates that recruiting and retaining the right people in the right positions has more influence than work location on dollars raised. Instead of closely managing how often fundraisers work in the office, fundraising leaders will be better served by focusing on creating engaging workplaces where fundraisers can flourish.
Stay tuned for the full results of this academic study to be published later this year.
About the Authors
Karen Aarestad, PhD, is the associate vice chancellor for Institutional Advancement at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and a faculty member in the College of Applied Health Sciences. Her academic research focuses on medical philanthropy.
Elizabeth Dollhopf-Brown, MBA, is the vice president of Development for Dartmouth Health and the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth College and a consulting partner with BWF.
Erica Dollhopf, PhD, is the associate director of research for the Lake Institute on Faith & Giving at the Lilly School of Philanthropy, Indiana University Indianapolis.
