I’m a huge fan of 80’s pop music. My husband thinks my taste in music is cringe-worthy, but I just wanna dance with somebody before I go-go because I just don’t stop believin.
Anyway.
One of my personal faves is/was Boy George’s Karma Chameleon so imagine my delight when I found out about curious chameleons.
It’s not an 80’s throwback–it’s a way of life.
My friend Greg alerted me to this study conducted by The Advancement Forum that surveyed over 1000 major gift officers to find communalities. Turns out, there are four key areas that set apart highly effective major gift officers from the rest.
If you have individuals who demonstrate behavioral and linguistic flexibility, intellectual and social curiosity, the skill to distill information, and the ability to approach the solicitation process in a strategic manner.
Curious Chameleons represented just 3.8% of the survey population, but had 78% higher odds of exceeding goal.
The exciting news is that being an effective major gift officer (or Executive Director who fundraises) is a learnable set of skills.
So, landing major donations are not some magical alchemy that only a few unicorn fundraisers possess. We can break down the skills and teach them.
As ED’s, we often think that we need to “find unicorns” to raise money. With this data, we can actually strategically recruit, train and develop our own talent to raise funds.
We can call it Unicorn School.
PS: Read here for more information about Curious Chameleons
PPS: What do you think? What are the implications for our industry if we could teach personal competencies tied to major gift work?
