Major Gift Officer Productivity Question & Answer (part 1 of a series)

Major Gift Officer Productivity Question & Answer (part 1 of a series)

By Tom Wilson Major Gifts Guru

Suzanne emailed a good follow-up question to one of my earlier posts on Major Gifts Officer Productivity.

"I've read several of your articles online and found them very helpful. I was particularly intrigued by your major gifts officer expectations. For your table in the earlier post, were you speaking just of salary or of total cost of fundraising?"

The earlier article had a chart that you can access by clicking on the highlighted article title above. Basically, it said that in year one you should cover salary, year 2 three times salary, and year 3 five times salary.

You should be using a fully loaded "salary" that includes benefits, equipment costs, training costs, etc. For example: a $50,000 direct salary would be fully loaded by adding 30% benefit costs (each organization will have a different factor, check with HR or your CFO), average of $2,000 a year for equipment, training, memberships etc. to bring to total cost to the organization to $67,000.

If your organization uses activity based cost accounting, then you may need to prorate rent, office supplies, secretarial support on top of this. But the $67,000 is a good start.

This article was the first of a series. See articles 2 and 3 below:

• Major Gift Officer Productivity Question & Answer (part 2 of a series)
• Major Gift Officer Productivity Question & Answer (part 3 of a series)

Permanent Link: Major Gift Officer Productivity Question & Answer (part 1 of a series)

http://majorgiftsguru.com/2009/03/major-gift-officer-productivity.html