Being a fundraiser shouldn't feel like playing Frogger

But sadly, sometimes it does.

When I was a kid and my parents took me to the grocery store, I begged (ahem, solicited…) them for quarters for the arcade next door where I would kill an hour playing the games of the day: Pac-Man, Defender, Missile Defense, Asteroids, Galaga, Q-Bert, and of course, Frogger.

What made Frogger especially intense was that it was the only game where you had to pilot an actual living thing through the game’s deadly hazards. Under the pressure of a ticking clock, you crossed a busy road of speeding delivery trucks, sports cars, and vans. If you were hit by a car, you were graphically squished dead. Once you made it across the road you then had to guide your tiny frog across a river, hopping from log to lily pad.

If you mistimed your jump, you were eaten or drowned. And if somehow you deftly navigated this watery gauntlet and reached the top of the screen, there were five vacant “homes” representing the only safe destination for each frog. Though sometimes and quite quizzically, your safe home housed a deadly alligator that would eat you.

Are you flipping kidding me? Talk about pressure!

In some fundraising offices, coming to work as a fundraiser, or engaging certain donors, feels very similar. Every day you post your career and livelihood as collateral against the speeding cars and crocodiles represented by capricious CEOs, self-obsessed advancement colleagues, and raging narcissists on our Boards.

Case in point: I once worked for an organization that fired nearly as many fundraising professionals as it hired. The CEO notoriously fired three consecutive Chief Development Officers, the the Director of Planned Giving, two Associate Vice Presidents, the Director of the Annual Fund, several Major Gifts Officers. But the CEO was also named “non-profit executive of the year” multiple times, suggesting that the behaviors exhibited were somehow befitting of admiration.

This is not an isolated incident. And sadly this has become normalized behavior, and has hollowed out the talent pipeline for our profession.

My point here is that the daily lives of a fundraising professional shouldn’t be driven by constant existential dread. Our careers don’t get “do-overs” and we can’t run to our parents for more quarters when we want to keep playing. But this change will only come from within, when the fundraising profession allows itself appropriate grace when mistakes are made, and we treat each other with compassion and good humor.

Because there are already enough crocodiles in this world.