Attracting the right people to develop your charity as a business

While the majority of larger charities will have public contracts, of the smaller charities that make up the majority of the sector this falls to one in four, and these will likely not have committed staffing for business development. As such, business development is a niche skill and finding the right people to do it is a challenge.

If like many charities you are not in a position to recruit committed business development professionals, consider how you can still ensure that this vital ingredient is being driven – is it committed into the jobs of the right strategic roles? Are those chipping in on it aware of the skills that will be expected of them? Do you have additional support you can bring on if the right opportunity pops up?

However, if you are lucky enough to have the investment to bring on or maintain a business development team….

- Be prepared to train people up

Face head on that you are unlikely to get a charity bidding professional – these roles are far better resourced in the private sector and too few charities have experience in them to create a skills pipeline. If you get one, count yourself lucky.

Someone with their career in the third sector will need a crash course in public procurement, and an ex-private sector pro will need the time and support to get their heads around the context of a charity. State explicitly in your ads that you welcome those with transferrable skills – many people feel that they need permission. Then plan the capacity, or the training budget, to manage an induction (and detail what you will offer to help them develop on your ad).

- Narrow down on what you need in the role

Business development takes a whole lot of skills; project management, attention to detail, joining the dots on organizational strategy, service visioning and modelling, budgets, relationships, ability to smile in the face of 2000 words to cut, the list goes on.

Bluntly, you will not get someone that will be perfect at all of them from day one. Pick a small handful that matter based on the needs of your organization / skills balance of your team, mark those as essential criteria, and then purposefully park the rest.

For the stuff that you parked - your interview is a chance to test for the core skills and aptitudes that make you confident that someone can develop. And it’s your job to develop them.

- Flog how exciting the role is

Our jobs are a mystery to a lot of people but, let me tell you, they are dead exciting – we work with motivated and passionate service leaders closest to the cause, shape the future of charity impact, ensure the best possible decisions for the charity’s future. Do not undersell your role by making it sound like we are just reactively churning out stuff to word count (I mean there is some of that of course but we are too busy loving our jobs to notice)

- Word of warning on “ability to work under pressure”

Bidding professionals do need to be able to work to pressured time deadlines, there is no way around that. However, the above phrasing in a job advert can be read as “we have a toxic work culture of unnecessary stress”. To avoid that (unless it’s true, in which case recruitment is probably not your number one concern) then emphasise how you actively balance this – good support, flexible TOIL, supportive team culture, etc etc

And a few other quickfire tips:

• Talk about the person that you want, not their experience – people will find it easier to recognize themselves

• Don’t just cut and paste your last advert – what matters now?

• Get someone from a key stakeholder team (operations, HR, finance, another significant support function) with a clear idea what they need from business development on your panel

• Always set a task to differentiate the ones that say that they can write confidently and the ones that actually can

• Poaching people from other teams will not win you friends but can be very successful strategy. Make sure your team have a good internal reputation!