Globaldev careers: The fundraiser

As chief development officer with Malala Fund, Lena Alfi oversees a team of five people that works to cultivate and manage relationships with corporate and foundation partners, as well as individual donors. The organization doesn’t accept government funding but works with a wide range of donors, such as Apple and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, to support education activists on the ground in eight countries where girls face the greatest barriers to education. Alfi, who holds a master’s in global human development, started in the sector working on women’s empowerment initiatives and developing partnerships to support education for Syrian refugees. Her first role at Malala Fund was as a corporate and foundation relationships officer, but she gradually took on more responsibility within the organization. This type of role is best suited to those who love interacting with people, Alfi said. While a relevant degree can be helpful, she has also found volunteering, internship, and real-life experience to be informative. Devex finds out what other advice Alfi has for professionals interested in fundraising roles. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. What is the role of a chief development officer? I develop all of the short- and long-term fundraising strategies and oversee a development team that engages with our existing donors and builds relationships with new donors. [The average day involves] lots of meetings. I check in with my team, check in on our fundraising status, our annual revenue goal, [have] internal calls with various team members and then a lot of external calls with either our existing donors to give them updates on our work or those who are interested in learning more about our work. I [also] stay up to date on giving trends of any shifts in their philanthropy space. [In the last year] we haven't been able to do all the in-person meetings we would have loved to. ... We've done a lot of Zoom calls, webinars, and newsletters to keep our donors engaged in our work virtually. But in a normal world, we would be doing lots of traveling and meetings and smaller types of events. What are the biggest challenges of the job, and what lessons have you learned in overcoming these? [The challenges] of this past year were unexpected shocks that shifted plans. The pandemic's impact on girls' education became very obvious to us early on, which shifted our work — we ended up launching a COVID-19 response initiative where we supported our partners in the countries where we work in keeping girls learning in those places. The quick shift of our approach meant that we had to raise funds really quickly and had to sort of shift what our plans were for the year. “[The] number one [skill] is listening — listening to donors ... to the things that inspire them, the things that interest them, and finding ways to form a connection.” --— Lena Alfi, chief development officer, Malala Fund The biggest lesson I've learned in all of that really was [the importance of] being honest with our donors about what we were seeing. We published a report pretty early on in the pandemic that showed that the pandemic risks keeping another 20 million girls out of school and that we were seeing some really serious and concerning education funding rollbacks happen. That, coupled with the findings of our report, really shifted how we were going to work and it created a sense of urgency ... to respond and make sure girls continue to learn. Being honest with our donors and sharing this as quickly as we could ... and asking for help, that was sort of a big lesson for me because donors felt really engaged, really compelled to help us, and they were proud to see us work so quickly. Striking the balance between how we forecast revenue in an uncertain time and continue to plan our work when we weren't sure what kind of a fundraising year it was going to be [is always a challenge]. What skill sets have you found to be most valuable, or what skills have you focused on building to progress in your own career? [The] number one [skill] is listening — listening to donors ... to the things that inspire them, the things that interest them, and finding ways to form a connection. And then a skill I'm always trying to build is communicating [so] figuring out better ways to explain [to donors] our work, its reach, and its importance. What are the best — and worst — parts of the job? The worst [part] is really just not having enough hours in the day [because] I wish I could spend all day talking to our donors and building more relationships. I have a long list of wishlist things I wish I could do [such as] getting to know different cultures of giving in other countries. But then the best [part] is the ability to interact with people who really care about helping and care about girls’ [rights] and teenage girls’ education. How have you seen your role and scope of work change in the last years as the sector has changed? It's much less about managing large mailing lists, which is sort of the traditional fundraising. It's becoming much more about finding creative ways to connect and engage with people. We're [also] seeing a variety of donors now [such as] young individual donors who give online, corporations who are giving in different ways [with] sophisticated CSR [corporate social responsibility] strategies, family foundations that are developing really driven mission-giving circles, there's just such a wider variety of donors to engage with. What advice would you have for other professionals looking to work in a similar role? You should work for a cause that you really care about. If it’s education or girls [rights] or [issues] that Malala Fund focuses on and is something that is really important to you, continue to work at it, check job postings — we post jobs all the time. But I would say alignment of the actual cause and passion [for that] is really important. [For leadership roles, it’s important] to be authentic and to be honest. [The other thing] is to have a really deep understanding of the work that you're promoting. I think it comes across when you can speak really well to the issues that you are asking people to support, and it's important that you understand the depth of those issues and be able to represent them well. What should someone know before pursuing this type of career path? How you interact with everyone matters. You never know who from your network … where they might end up and how they might keep you in mind or think fondly of a conversation they had with you. This might sound cliche, but networking and keeping up with your network is really beneficial to continue to grow your career path. [It’s important] also to have mentors and to have people you can speak with along the way.