Early on, the job is to help you gain clarity. Making decisions and helping others make decisions are two distinct skill sets. The latter involves excellent listening and coaching skills, usually honed through professional experience in some form of client service, such as consulting, advising, coaching, fundraising, and sales. Those who have adopted a “servant leader” mindset — characterized by a commitment to supporting the growth and well-being of others, even if they haven’t worked in client service — can also be highly effective in this role.^[1]

Look for people with excellent, active listening skills; the kind of strong communication skills that will allow them to probe and disagree with you, respectfully; and the kind of initiative and resourcefulness to seek out people, ideas, and other resources that can help you. “Managing up” is a particular capability characterized by being a genuine source of help for someone who may wield more authority than you do.

What you don’t want is a professional fan or cheerleader who is just grateful to be so close to power because they are working with someone with more influence, wealth, celebrity, or other forms of power.^[2] They view their primary role as keeping you happy, even if it means preventing you from learning that some of your ideas and assumptions are misguided. In other words, they reinforce the talent pitfalls we described earlier and can impede your progress toward greater social impact.

Experienced philanthropic advisors, nonprofit and philanthropic consultants, professional grantmakers, former fundraisers, and nonprofit leaders whose interests and experience go beyond the mission of their particular organization — these are people who can help you. They will be more familiar with the tools, information resources, thought leaders, and real-world case examples that can help you hone in on your goals and approach. More experienced peer donors can also help by serving as mentors and referring you to the specific individuals, consulting firms, education programs, and information resources that helped them on their journey.

You may find it hard to make some of these early decisions without some additional information. Since deciding on your initial goals and approach is only the first job, you’ll want someone who is capable of quickly gathering relevant information from a variety of sources, including desk research such as web searches and conversations with subject matter experts. Some of this information can be collected by someone who may not have the other skills listed above. However, in the absence of those skills, you risk receiving a lot of information, but little useful insight.

Many of these capabilities will continue to be valuable throughout your philanthropy journey and long after you’ve made these early decisions. For this reason, the same person or people who help you early on may continue with you as long as they possess the capabilities required for the four “jobs” we describe in the next section.

Notes

1. The Wharton School. (2019, May 15). Which Leadership Style Is Best for Your Team? https://online.wharton. upenn.edu/blog/which-leadership-style-is-best-for-your-team.

2. Rousemaniere, D. (2015, January 23). What Everyone Should Know About Managing Up. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2015/01/what-everyone-should-know-about-managing-up.