A number of employees from the Department of Development, the branch of the University responsible for fundraising, have quit over the past few months. Development administrators say that the departures are part of a normal pattern in the fundraising industry and will not have a negative impact on University affairs.
The staff members left Tufts in order to pursue new professional opportunities, many of them with distinguished institutions looking to fill positions in newly formed capital campaigns.
"There is nothing unusual or unexpected about this phenomenon," said Brian Lee, vice president of Development. "In fact, it speaks volumes about the skills and talent of our people and how other institutions rate the quality of the staffing of our successful fund raising initiatives."
Lee declined to comment on the exact number of employees that have left the department.
Research published by the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) has shown that high turnover is typical in the fundraising business. However, the revolving door of development has slowed in the 1990s, according to a 1996 CASE article entitled "Turnover Trends: A new study says turnover among advancement professionals is lower than it was a decade ago-and less the employees' choice."
"While we work hard to reward and retain our talented staff - and most often succeed in doing so - occasionally staff members choose to pursue opportunities for professional growth and development outside of Tufts," Lee said.
The University is in the process of reviewing resumes for the vacant positions. Lee hopes that Tufts' entrepreneurial development and its excellent reputation for fundraising achievement will attract professionals in the development field.
To this point, Tufts has had an uncommonly stable development team with relatively low turnover compared to other universities. But as the successful "Tufts Tomorrow" fundraising campaign - described by Lee as "six consecutive years of record-breaking fundraising achievement" - heads towards its latter stages, retention problems may have set in.
"As our current campaign begins to wind down, it is to be expected that other institutions in the area looking to 'staff up' for their own ambitious fund drives would seek the kind of talented development professionals that Tufts is known to hire and cultivate," Lee said.
The Department of Development easily surpassed the original $400 million "Tufts Tomorrow" goal. It has raised over $516 million dollars to date, and while there are 16 months remaining in the campaign, it is not far from realizing its revised goal of $600 million.
There has been unprecedented growth in annual fundraising achievement since the implementation of the program. The University raised an estimated $35 million during the campaign's early phase, and an all-time high of $88 million in a single year was raised last year.
The development department will continue to function despite the staff departures and will continue to work to raise money for the University. Nearly $1 billion has been raised from private sources in three successful campaigns since 1978.
