Philanthropy and Foundations Field Guide: Insights from Heather Haines
I recently hosted an "Ask Me Anything" with Heather Haines, Senior Director of Convening and Engagement with Strategic Philanthropy at the Milken Institute, to demystify a sector a lot of government people are drawn to and very few can find a clear path into. Heather has spent more than two decades in this world, with leadership roles at the International Fund for Animal Welfare, The END Fund, Meridian International Center, and the Center for Global Development. She also has close personal proximity to the federal transition many of you are living through right now, and it showed in everything she shared.
Sidenote: Heather made clear that everything she shared reflects her own views, and that she was not speaking for the Milken Institute or any of her former organizations.
Here is the breakdown of our conversation:
What the Work Looks Like Day to Day & How it Compares to Government Service
High risk tolerance, no blueprint. The prevailing attitude is closer to "go build it" than "here is the process." There is often no budget and no precedent, and you are expected to figure it out anyway. The trade is real: you carry the burden of inventing the thing, and there is also a genuine well of forgiveness when it does not land.
Generalists thrive. There are deep experts in health, finance, and philanthropy, but more often the people who do well are foxes rather than hedgehogs. If you can think across many things without being the world's leading authority on any one of them, that is an asset here rather than a gap.
Creativity is welcome. Heather was pitched a dinner by a fine jeweler in Singapore and had to work out how that could genuinely connect to philanthropy. The answer became legacy: what you keep, what you leave behind, family. That kind of mental stretch is part of the job and one that can keep it fun and interesting.
Structures are flat and, honestly, fuzzy. There is no GS scale. Roles are sometimes created for a specific person and never posted. Promotion paths can be murky enough that people ask what the next step is and do not get a clean answer. Compensation movement swings from years with no cost of living adjustment to a surprise raise out of nowhere.
Objections You'll Need to Preempt as a Government Pivoter
Heather was candid about the pushback she hears when a government candidate comes up. Three phrases recur: they just want something right now and will leave when things stabilize, they are way too skilled for this job, and they will get bored.
Take these on directly rather than hoping they do not come up. Be explicit about why you want this job, not ANY job. Explain what about the daily work appeals to you, and repeat it until your message is unmistakable. Heather took a significant step back and a large pay cut to work in animal welfare because she wanted to try doing the thing she cared about as a nine to five, and she found herself explaining that reasoning over and over.
And one thing almost everybody forgets: say that you want the job, out loud, in the interview. It sounds unsophisticated, but it works.
Two more that matter. Write the cover letter when there is an option to do one, because fewer places require them now and that is why doing it well stands out. And let some personality into your resume and your LinkedIn. Heather still remembers a hire from years ago because of her hobby of woodworking. One of my early coaching clients started a nonprofit teaching kids to rock climb, and that absolutely belonged on his resume. You are trying to be memorable and connect to a human being reading a large stack of applications.
Where the Hiring Is Moving Right Now
Corporate foundations and family philanthropies. Heather flagged this as where she sees the most movement, and as an area this audience tends to overlook. It is private sector money doing public good work, and in her experience the disaster response and community work coming out of these organizations is substantive.
Social impact more broadly. She recommended following Mel Ochoa and the Social Innovation Summit, who regularly circulate roles across this sector along with who to contact.
Organizations shifting their models. Funding uncertainty is pushing nonprofits into new areas. Meridian International Center, once built heavily around State Department work, has moved into space and sports diplomacy. Others have absorbed expertise from institutions that contracted.
Which means the most in-demand skill right now is flexibility. Heather described a colleague with a science PhD who moves between education, climate philanthropy, and workforce depending on where the funding is, approaching each new area like a researcher. If you can pivot and go deep quickly, say so.
Partnerships Roles Rather Than Fundraising Roles
Several attendees asked about postings requiring you to have already secured a specific dollar figure in donations. Heather's view is blunt: it is a bad question, because no single person secures that kind of money. It happens across teams, over years, through relationships. Asking for a number is a shortcut for something much harder to measure.
Her recommendation is to steer away from roles labeled fundraising or development unless that is the career you know you want, and to look instead at strategic partnerships and foundation advisor roles. That is where your experience transfers cleanly, and where the dollar-figure question does not come up at all.
One naming quirk worth knowing: many organizations now call their development teams "partnerships," and some use "investor relations." Read the responsibilities rather than the title, because the same word covers very different jobs.
When Heather uses "partnerships" about her own work, she means figuring out how organization A and organization B can work together to amplify a message, raise visibility on an issue, or advocate more effectively. Which is, more or less, what most of you have been doing every day already.
Networking, and an Honest Challenge to It
Heather returned to relationships more than any other topic, and gave specifics rather than platitudes.
When building relationships with people at the places you want to work, it's a good idea to check in roughly every six weeks. She described an intern who kept the relationship warm on what must have been a calendar reminder, and who was the obvious choice when a role opened.
Make it non-transactional. Not "do you have any jobs." Share an article you thought they would like, send a question, a quick checking in note. She was direct that she often wants to help and simply cannot recall months later who was interested in what.
Close the loop after interviews. If you got far and did not get it, stay in touch! The person who did get the job is not always the right fit a year on, and you are already known and vetted. She also singled out a candidate who did not get a role, then wrote months later to say he had landed elsewhere and to say thank you. She has not forgotten him.
Personalize cold outreach. "I'd love to pick your brain" is the fastest way to be ignored. My formula: give context on who you are to them, be clear about what you are looking for, and add a sentence or two on what you bring.
Volunteering is a non-obvious thing you can do to help your job search. It builds your network, gives you a schedule and routine, can help build your self-confidence, and it's a great way to stay connected to service while you search. You do not know who you are going to be working alongside.
Now the honest part. One attendee pushed back hard, and she deserves credit for saying it out loud: she has done the networking, gotten the referrals, and seen roughly the same result as cold applying.
My answer is that a referral does not promise anything. It moves you from a very large pile into a much smaller one. The odds of getting an interview from a cold application run around three percent, so improving on that is worth a lot even when it does not feel like it. The other half of my answer is that the quality of the relationship determines the quality of the advocacy. Someone who barely knows you can forward a resume. Someone who knows you will walk it to the hiring manager. Heather made the same point from the inside: her influence over a hire depends enormously on whether the role sits in her division or somewhere she has no standing.
That is how I got my job at Tesla. I reached out to an alumni association before I knew anyone in California, met someone for coffee when nothing was open, sent a handwritten thank you, and kept in touch for months. When a role opened, that coffee date introduced me to the hiring manager. All 25+ people I have helped land roles so far this year got there through networking.
Finding Roles That Are Hard to Find
Recruiters. Family foundations and individual philanthropists tend to use high-touch external recruiters. Most nonprofits hire in house. Recruiters are paid by the organization rather than by you, so getting on a list is worth something but remember that they are not working on your behalf. Be very skeptical of any recruiter asking you to pay them.
Postings already spoken for. One tell I use is a role that posts late on a Friday and closes on Monday - oftentimes that means that the organization has someone in mind and they are posting it purely for legal reasons. The better protection is having someone inside you've built a real relationship with that you can simply ask whether it is worth your time.
Family offices. These are genuinely hard to find, because the people behind them prefer to stay quiet. Boolean search on LinkedIn can help. So does building a target list of the ones aligned with your goals, following them, and checking career pages on a set schedule. Heather noted that direct outreach, when you are very clear about what you want and why you are writing, gets a response more often than people expect.
A Note on AI
Use it as a coach, not a ghostwriter. Good questions you can ask the tool: what percentage match is this resume to this job description, what is in the description that is missing from my resume, where is the government jargon I need to strip out. Questions to avoid: rewrite this for me, or how should I say this. Hiring teams are already pushing back on how uniform applications have become, and your voice is one of the few advantages left. You are writing for two audiences, the AI screen and then the human being behind it. The first one is a gate you need to bypass, and the second one decides.
Bottom Line
Heather's throughline was that this sector runs on relationships and adaptability rather than credentials and process. The structures are looser than what you might be used to, which is uncomfortable at first and is also exactly why roles get built around people who are known and trusted.
A few things I would add. Government people are notoriously bad at taking credit. There is a lot of "we" in how you describe your work and very little "I," and that has to change. The skills you think are ordinary are not: your service instinct, your willingness to be useful, the networks you built inside organizations and overseas. People who succeed in government are like water, in that they always find a way through, and that alone is a superpower.
Be expansive about where you look, too. A friend of mine works for a science-focused organization, which needed crisis communications for the first time this year and hired someone from USAID, because who is better at that.
And if you have been at this a while and it is wearing on you, remember that it's not a character flaw. The job search can be a real slog and it takes a toll on your confidence. Find things that rebuild your confidence and fill you up. Protecting your energy is part of the strategy rather than a break from it!
