Being perennially cash-strapped and believing in the power of multitasking, NGOs tend to overload their job descriptions (JDs) when hiring for new vacancies. This includes that of the fundraiser, usually considered an expensive but valuable role that could resolve the organization’s financial constraints.
To be fair, it is not just nonprofits that create JDs of this kind. The whole job market right now is awash in it, especially with Western companies taking advantage of remote hiring in developing countries like the Philippines. It creates another dimension in labor intensification, with 2-4 normally separate roles crunched into one. One would wonder how a new hire is expected to have spare time for family, recreation and other human pursuits outside of work.
The employer certainly does not think of such mundane things, simply throwing out employees who are not financially desperate enough to become dehumanized by extreme multitasking. With many NGOs leaning towards corporatizing their operations and even core values, this JD overloading practice has been ported over from the for-profit to the nonprofit sector, along with the expectation that cost-benefit ratios in manpower composition will consequently increase.
A typical fundraiser JD merges at least the following distinct roles: grant developer, partnership manager, fundraising events planner and communications manager. To maximize the underwhelming salaries they pay, some NGOs would even throw in the tasks of funding allocations, Salesforce administration and website manager. No wonder fundraisers often have that sinking feeling of “being set up to fail” at onboarding time.
What happens thereafter is not a rise in cost-benefit ratio vis-a-vis the newly hired fundraiser, but the higher likelihood of hitting the following pitfalls:
1) Hiring Difficulties
Loading up the JD with tasks for 2-4 staffers instantly turns off the job seeker. Faced with such a staggering amount of declared responsibilities, he/she expects to have a work-life balance that is heavily tilted towards the former, meaning more unpaid overtime and less leave approvals. Since it is well-known that NGO salaries are lower than those in the private sector, the prospect of being tied to a role that involves extreme multitasking becomes even less attractive to a potential applicant.
Nonprofit recruiters also face a hard time finding the “right match”, as candidate after candidate will fail to meet the standards of the hiring team. This is understandable, given that not everyone has the superhuman abilities of Flash, the zippy Avenger. The unlucky applicant who passes their muster is likely to be overwhelmed even during his/her probationary period, and it’s a toss-up whether that new hire will resign in frustration or be fired for not meeting the role’s vertigo-inducing KPIs.
2) High Turnover Rates
Any overloaded staff is bound to experience burnout at some point, even those who consider NGO work as a social commitment. Combined with financial pressures at home and the call of more focused roles in corporates or in nonprofits with more humane work-life balance, stressed out and underpaid personnel often leave after a year or two. Rather than changing the workload and JD, poorly-led NGOs would simply hire replacements based on the same set of responsibilities, repeating the cycle and leading to fast turnovers. This may impact negatively on donor perception and affect the continuity of giving, especially as fundraisers are client-facing staff who are most in contact with donors.
3) Multitasking Inefficiencies
Despite brain multitasking having been debunked as a myth that increases stress and reduces efficiency, many corporate-influenced NGO leaders still subscribe to it, with predictable results. The management team usually justifies the practice as an inevitable workaround given staffing shortages, and rather than adjusting targets and workloads to refocus on doable priorities, they stick to KPIs that often reflect planning overreach. Strategically, this fetish for multitasking has greatly contributed to the erratic growth trajectory and lack of program innovation in many NGOs.
Suggested Ways Forward
Nonprofits that persist in multitasking and overloading their JDs will end up punishing not only their staff but their organizations as well. Listing KPIs for new hires is an exercise in balancing between priority tasks and human capacity, and is not the same as generating a wish-list of what the CEO wants in an ideal world. It is also about categorizing multiple tasks into principal and secondary, wherein the performance of the fundraiser (or other NGO staff) will be measured mainly with the former.
Since multitasking is the problem child of an overly ambitious plan, it is worth considering the shift to a more grounded framework such as the expansion-consolidation strategy, whereby one advances only when a program or an innovation has been stabilized. This is a grassroots-organizing strategy that places quality over quantity to create solid, sustainable growth, and is best suited to organizations (or even businesses) that start out small and under-resourced but aim for greatness later. It is an antidote to grandiose, multitasking-dependent goals that are certain to stifle NGO development rather than promote it.