Hiring A Major Gifts Officer: Strategies for Success from Recruitment to Onboarding

Created By: Rossemary Martinez and Amanda Nelson
January 8, 2025

As we enter a new year, bringing on a Major Gifts Officer (MGO) is a critical step in building or expanding your organization’s fundraising efforts. Whether it’s your first time hiring for this role or you are simply refining your approach for a new hire, navigating this process can feel overwhelming. So, how do you ensure that you are engaging the most suitable candidates and establishing a foundation for mutual success? To help guide you, we’ve outlined key steps to consider when hiring your next MGO and setting them up to succeed and create a meaningful impact once on board. 

Establishing Leadership Alignment 

Involving your leadership at the onset of the MGO hiring process is crucial to prevent confusion over work scope, level, qualifications, skill sets, and other key factors. To ensure alignment on your team, consider the below approaches: 

1. Conduct early initial meetings with leadership to review the role’s scope, expected outcomes, and insights to build the ideal candidate profile.  

2. Take a realistic look at where your organization stands. Assess your readiness for major gifts fundraising to set achievable benchmarks and develop a clear roadmap for success. 

3. Once the job description is drafted, collaborate with leadership to refine and confirm the role requirements, incorporating any adjustments or additional details.  

4. Finally, make sure to bring key leaders along the way. Schedule top candidates to interview with executives, allowing leadership to assess alignment with expectations and organizational goals. 

Rethinking Your Interview Process 

Are you leveraging your interview process to select the best MGO candidate? Research finds that structured interviews have the highest predictive validity for identifying top candidates, offering double the validity compared to unstructured interviews. When hiring managers follow an unstructured process, it can lead to increased bias by focusing on factors that don’t accurately predict success in the role and decisions being made without clear and objective criteria. Try integrating the following strategies to enhance the accuracy and effectiveness of hiring decisions:  

1. Develop key competencies and targeted questions: Identify the critical competencies for the role and build interview questions around these skills and behaviors to assess how well a candidate’s experience aligns with the job requirements.  

2. Utilize skills-based interviews early: If you’re looking for specific technical skills or expertise, include a skills-based assessment in the early stages. This can be done during the initial phone screen to gauge the candidates’ abilities. For instance, if your organization is looking for an MGO with experience in building from the ground up, include questions that assess their past success in similar roles demonstrating this capability.  

3. Conduct behavioral and cultural interviews: Use a behavioral interview along with targeted questions to assess how candidates handle situations they’re likely to face in the role. This ensures they have the behavioral competencies needed for success. Additionally, a cultural interview with values-based questions can be useful in determining if a candidate’s motivations and principles align with the organization’s values.  

4. Incorporate a standardized evaluation criteria: Scorecards or rubrics aligned with each interview in your process can help standardize the evaluation process. With a scoring system, interviewers can objectively assess the extent to which each candidate meets the desired competencies and requirements, strengthening hiring decisions. 

These approaches provide a more comprehensive evaluation of candidates, ensuring stronger alignment with role requirements and organizational goals. 

Considering Culture Add vs Culture Fit 

Organizations should move away from hiring candidates based on factors such as “cultural fit”. Since most organizations struggle to define their culture, hiring for “fit” often leads to implicit biases. These biases tend to favor candidates who feel familiar or comfortable, which risks overlooking candidates who may bring valuable, diverse perspectives simply because they don’t seem to “fit.” Instead, hire for cultural add to prioritize diversity, innovation, and growth by seeking individuals who can enrich and expand your organization’s culture.  

Hiring for culture add does not mean disregarding all considerations for harmony or alignment. The new hire you bring into your organization should still resonate with your organization’s core values and demonstrate the ability to work effectively with the existing team. This approach is more about finding individuals who respect and align with those values while bringing in new strengths, perspectives, and ideas to enhance and evolve workplace dynamics. 

Conducting Proactive Reference Checks 

If you want to gain deeper insights and reinforce your decision about a candidate, consider utilizing proactive references. Reference checks can be used to gather additional information on a candidate and validate their claims while also revealing strengths or areas for improvement that may not surface during the interview. By implementing these strategies, you create a comprehensive vetting process that leads to more informed and effective hiring decisions. Here are several approaches to consider: 

1. Request references from the appropriate professionals based on what you want to learn about the candidate. For instance, if you’re interested in understanding how a candidate has collaborated in a team setting, consider asking for a reference from a previous colleague. If you want to gauge the candidate’s performance and behavior, request a reference from a former supervisor.  

2. Standardized, open-ended questions are an effective way to guide your reference check call while still allowing flexibility to address any lingering questions about a candidate to validate the information that was shared and clarify any points that may need further explanation.  

3. Encourage references to share detailed examples rather than providing brief, surface-level responses. Ask references to describe specific situations in which the candidate demonstrated key skills, faced challenges, or contributed to team dynamics.  

Setting Your MGO Up for Success 

After finalizing your hiring decision, the next critical step is setting your new hire up for success through a strategic and intentional onboarding process. A study by Talmundo indicated that an effective onboarding process can increase engagement by 33% and new hire retention by 82%. Ensure that new hires have the right tools, clear guidance, and support to help them excel in their role and integrate seamlessly into your organization.  

While there are many approaches to onboarding, a structured roadmap like a 30-60-90-day plan is an excellent starting point to establish clear expectations and guide your new MGO as they settle into their role. This framework provides measurable goals and objectives while breaking the onboarding process into phases that are manageable. Use the example below as a foundation for creating a 30-60-90-day plan for your new MGO. 

30 Days: Getting Oriented 

• Provide your new MGO with a deep dive into your mission, values, and programs. At this time, they should be meeting key team members, leadership, and board members to build a strong foundation of internal relationships. 

• Familiarize them with the existing donor database, major gift history, and current pipeline. 

• Set small, achievable objectives. This can include learning internal systems, attending priority meetings, and identifying top donor prospects. 

60 Days: Building Connections 

• Facilitate introductions with key donors and stakeholders to build relationships and understand donor priorities. 

• Collaborate on a comprehensive major gifts plan that outlines strategies tailored to your organization’s needs. 

• Define metrics, such as the number of donor meetings to complete or stewardship touchpoints to initiate. 

90 Days: Driving Impact 

• Support your MGO in executing their first cultivation and solicitation activities, ensuring they have the resources they need to succeed. 

• Regularly review progress, celebrate early wins, and provide constructive feedback to refine their approach. 

• Work together to outline a clear roadmap for the next six to twelve months, aligning their efforts with broader organizational goals. 

MGOs are a critical part of your team, with the ability to make or break your fundraising progress for the year. If you approach the recruitment and onboarding process with clarity, structure, and flexibility, your new MGO will be equipped with the tools and confidence to make a significant impact.   

Orr Group can help you build, attract, and retain senior fundraising talent. Get in touch to learn more about how we can support your nonprofit during times of transition and contribute to your growth.

Rossemary Martinez is a Senior Associate Director on the Talent team at Orr Group. Rossemary assists with recruitment efforts, onboarding, and other Human Resources functions for Orr Group’s nonprofit clients. 

Amanda Nelson is a Managing Director at Orr Group. With 20 years of professional fundraising experience, Amanda brings extensive expertise working with large, complex organizations and developing innovative and scalable fundraising solutions.