Hi all, I'm new to this subreddit, and I'm hoping this is the right place to ask for some advice. I have an interview coming up for an assistant director of giving position at a mid-size university. The position will deal with a specific class range. In my interview schedule, I see that there is a half-hour set aside for a "practice situation and skills test." Any thoughts on what that might entail? Any tips on how to prepare? Thank you!!

I work for a large regional nonprofits that organizes dozens of large scale community events. We’ve been looking for a solution that would allow us to raise money based on the size of our impact. For instance, a donor would pledge to give $1 for every volunteer hour, 0.50 cents for every tree planted, and $10 for every home painted. We have approximately 20+ impact activities that a donor could support, but we have not been able to locate a software that allows for this type of pledge form.

Does anyone have recommendations or experience is this area?

Hi everyone. I handle communications for a small regional charity with an annual net revenue of ~$3M. I started here a little while ago and it's my first time working for a fundraising org. My team wants to launch a virtual peer-to-peer campaign for the first time.

There's no plan outlining goals, objectives, tactics, and evaluation criteria. I'm not convinced there will ever be one unless I volunteer to do it, but I'm not a development or fundraising expert (and I should note that leadership in development and fundraising is not outlined in my job description; we have a development lead).

I'm looking for advice on how to create a communications plan for this campaign when there is no overarching strategy to inform that thinking. I'm also curious about if there are any considerations I should be taking into account when it comes to the social media monitoring during this campaign, since it's virtual. We don't have any social monitoring tools, but I will recommend earmarking budget for one if that's a critical component of managing reputation on a project like this. Further, if anyone can point me towards success stories, that would be so appreciated.

I have no experience whatsoever as a dev coordinator, no college, no computer background, nothing but the director of development at my current job came to me and asked if I’d be interested in the position. They know I have no experience & are willing to teach me because they believe I “have what it takes” but I’m just curious exactly how hard it is to learn with no prior knowledge or experience of the position?

For context, I’m from the UK and have a degree in politics and philosophy and a masters in International Development. I worked in a few social enterprises in different varied roles and have 1.5 years experiences working with local government with refugees. I would like to work in the international development/non profit sector. I would say my main skills are probably my verbal and written communication.

I’m curious about this career field and what the day to day involves as well as the skills required? The idea of phoning people up and “selling” a piece to try and get them to donate and trying to hit targets as well as cultivating relationships with donors excites me. However I’m not sure what the day to day exactly involves and I have no direct experience in relation to this field. I would appreciate any insight on this field as I have been curious about some of the fundraising assistant, officer and further down the line, major gift officer roles I’ve been seeing pop up.

Hi, friends! I wanted to see if you have any advice about a salary offer I just received. The offer is $83k base for Director of Development. I’d get an additional $2.5k if I hit the individual giving goal, an additional $2.5k if I hit the foundation giving goal, and an additional $6k if I hit both.

This would be a promotion from my current role as Donor Relations Officer, which pays $77k. To me, this seems like a lot of extra work for not a lot of extra money. But my boss (our CEO, a longtime CDO herself), who has been my mentor for nearly six years, thinks that this is fair based on the size of our organization and my level of experience.

As part of this role, I will be supervising my colleague (and the only other person on our team, lol). She is 25, this was her first job out of college. She’s very smart and hardworking but very green, and needs a lot of coaching. She handles all of the admin and, under my supervision, grants of $10k and below.

I work for a mid-sized nonprofit in Atlanta. Our budget is around $2.9M, and development covers half of that. I have six years of fundraising experience, all at the same organization, but my responsibilities have consistently grown and evolved the entire time.

Some context: Our Chief Development Officer left in June. Around the time she left, I was promoted from Development Manager to Donor Relations Officer (a shift from running annual fund with a small MG portfolio to managing all of individual giving with support from our CEO). They have not been able to find a good replacement, so they have paused the search but are still open to the right candidate. If I continue to develop and become ready for the role before they find someone else, it will probably be me.

I told her I will think about it this weekend and talk to her on Monday. It really does not feel like the pay increase is commensurate with the increased level of responsibility, but I don’t want to be a jerk about it if it is in fact a fair offer.

Thank you all for your feedback!!

hello! i work for a large public university, and im starting to hear more and more about international advancement amongst my peers schools. i’m new to this career field but i LOVE it and to be able to do it internationally?!? dream job.

if anyone in international advancement sees this — can i hear a little bit about how you got to where you are? what was your background and resume when you got hired for international fundraising? i’d love to hear any insight you have. thank you!!!

I am chair of fundraising for a local non-profit group. We have an upcoming event that includes a silent auction. The event is a casual 3 hours, come and go, and the auction winners will be announced the same day. Auction items have all been donated, range from $600 to $20. I had planned on listing starting by bids at about 30-40% market value. Another volunteer suggested we should have no starting bids. This feels not great for two reasons: 1: the message it sends to our donors. 2: I’ve put in endless amounts of labour into organizing, and starting at $0 makes the work feel worthless. Thoughts?

Essentially this title in a nutshell.

I’ve been in the area for nearly six years, across three different functions, with not much idea where to specialise going forward as I enjoy it all! (I know major giving is the best paid).

Particularly for those of you with significantly more experience, did you plan your career out? Have you found it relatively easy to progress? Are there any methods you’d recommend for success (mentors etc)?

For example, in higher ed, I’m not sure if jumping institutions every two years is seen favourably on your resume.

I’m also really keen to hear about people’s WLB experiences in the different functions, industries, departments, locations etc.

If you have managed to pivot out of funanddev with significant experience, what drove you? Which industry are you in now & was it relatively simple or complex?

Thanks!

Hi! So I'm in my senior year of college and my final internships and graduation is looming towards me.

I have a fun and dev internship that I'm most likely going to get with my uni soon (I'm the only one asking for an internship with the foundation). I'd love for it to lead into a job, the down side being I have to live in my current city which is a boring city especially in your twenties. Also, it's not guaranteed that it will even lead into a job.

I have another summer 2025 internship with a fortune 300 in b2b sales which I haven't decided I'll do yet because of the cognitive dissonance of joing corporate America. This one almost guarantees a job, though, and the internship program is in a big, shiny city and seems like a blast. Company culture is also said to be very good. I have to make a decision on this soon, even before I know if this current fun and dev internship will lead into a job.

As professionals in fun and dev, would you recommend I take sales experience with a fortune 300 company then after a few years transition to a non-profit role? How much of a leg up will it give me in terms of landing me a non profit dev role if I were to do this as opposed to going straight into non profit dev?

Thanks!

Hi there, I am a Director of Development for a very new and quickly scaling nonprofit. I am making their development plan from scratch as I quickly realized structure is needed in a very unstructured organization as the first full time staff member.

How do you format your month by month actionable development plan. I currently have mine broken out into Governance Tasks, Fundraising Initiatives, Communication, and Stewardship month by month. Hoping this will help keep our heads on straight.

Has anybody had experience moving from a more local nonprofit to a statewide organization? How did it go for you? I left for a new opportunity about 9 months ago and have been struggling.

A little background about myself - I spent about 10 years in the development department at a countywide domestic violence agency. I started as a development assistant, then worked as a grant coordinator (my favorite role) and eventually spent the back half of my time as the development director. I oversaw a small team of two (three if you include me). In my time we doubled revenues from about $1.8 to $3.6 million. Our org was heavily grants based (70%) with a mix larger individual donors, event and appeal revenue, and less than 1% from program fees rounding out the remainder. Grants have always been my specialty, but I would say I was competent and moderately successful at increasing the other areas of giving as well. A lot happened through no fault of my own that led me to moving on, but that's another post entirely.

I was burnt out from fundraising in a lot of ways, so I decided I would strictly look for grant writing jobs specifically, since that's where I'm most comfortable. The problem is I'm now at a legal aid organization that provides services throughout the state with multiple offices. I've struggled for a number of reasons beyond just the typical new job learning curve, I think. The county that I worked in previously is actually in a different state, since it's on the state border, so none of my previous contacts remain. The size of the new organization means that each region of our service area has different challenges, something I'm struggling to understand or articulate with any confidence, which could be just new job learning curve, I suppose. We don't apply for smaller grant funding because it doesn't make an impact like it did at my last job (new revenues are closer to $17 million). I feel like I was good at building up smaller dollar grants into something that mattered where I was before, but I only ask for medium to larger grants here, which get far more rejections. I had been okay with rejections in the past because I had so many asks out at once that there would always been some success around the corner, but the sheer number of applications are lower because of the time it takes to write the more in-depth applications, so I'll go weeks at a time with nothing and the rejections linger. The government grants we write for are super competitive, so I think a smaller percentage of success will be the norm. I'm also feeling more disconnected from the org than I was expecting due to not being centralized where I see the program work happening, and because most of my meetings are virtual even when I'm in the office due to scattered locations. Finally, as with a lot of orgs, pandemic related funding is now gone and the org is struggling financially, so the pressure is getting to me. Unfortunately the org is about 95 percent grant funded and has only just begun to seek other types of funding, which as most of you know will take time to build, especially given that the board is made up of attorneys without many connections to corporate funders (which is a requirement of these type of legal aid orgs).

Anyway, I guess I wonder if anybody else has been through something similar. Is my personality more aligned to a more local agency or have I simply not given this new opportunity enough time?

I’m going to a gala for an org I used to work for and it’s a costume theme. I thought it would be funny to have a costume related to dev work. Right now I’m thinking along the lines of ghost of late grant reports or wicked witch of sponsors…

Any ideas??

I’ve been in dev for twenty years and recently transitioned to a position that no longer works in traditional dev work. I’ll be careful with whatever my costume is to not make it offensive to individual donors (even though I could make some funny ones using that theme…)

Hi folks. So I'm currently running Dev for a smallish non profit after nearly two decades climbing to higher levels in larger non profits. The places I've worked in the past always had plenty of resources, but I'm my current spot I'm forced to make shrewd decisions about the best way to spend our limited resources.

Which brings me to the question of wealth screening. I've used a few different tools on the market, and there's no doubt the information is valuable, but is it critical, and should I budget for it? My thesis which I'm happy to have argued against, is that if I spend my time and energy getting you know the people who have self selected through engagement metrics I have accessible (social engagement, emails, events, etc...) then I'll identify the folks most likely to make a gift, without needing to rely on wealth screening.

My experience tells me that while wealth screening is nice to have, it's a data point that's not necessarily the one that best identifies your most important supporters.

Thoughts? Agree? Disagree? Would love opinions on this matter. (Or if you have a low budget solution to get this data, I'd love that too!)

Hi fellow fundraisers! I was just hired as a new Development Director for a nonprofit providing services to the adult autism community. They are a longtime nonprofit with proven success and financial stability, but they have never had a Development program before. This is an entirely new role and new department for this organization, which is exciting!

I know many of you (like me) have experience with trying to fix issues that stem from not setting things up from the beginning, and we all have our own ideas of what we wish had been done from Day 1. Rarely do we get the chance to build the program from the ground up, especially for an organization that has already developed a long history of successful mission-driven work and proven financial stability and leadership.

So seeking to solicit expertise from others beyond my own experiences:

What would you recommend to someone setting up a brand-new development program?

What are the key first steps and priorities?

How would you go about starting a CRM / donor database from the ground up?

What words of caution would you give? Those "be sure to NOT do it like this" suggestions?

⏱ As we approach the end of the year, nonprofit organizations are gearing up for one of the most critical times in fundraising. In an election year, it's especially important to be strategic in our approach.

❤ With the noise of political campaigns, it's easy for donors to feel overwhelmed, but this is also an opportunity to remind them of the causes that matter deeply to them—causes that will continue to need support long after the election is over.

📢 Now is the time to engage with our supporters, share impactful stories, and highlight the difference their contributions can make. Let’s make this year-end fundraising campaign not just about meeting goals, but about making lasting change in our communities.

💥 Here are some of my top suggestions 💥

1. Review your website’s donation process. Platforms like Donorbox are made for this!

2. Create a calendar to keep you on track. Be sure to include a thank you plan!

3. Create impactful stories and messaging. Segmenting your donors and targeting the messaging can significantly increase donations.

4. Instill a sense of urgency.

5. Try multi-channel asks. In-person, social media, email, notecards.

6. Ask your board to get involved!

7. Take a deep breath and get ready for 2025!

Typically, I prepare briefing materials if a donor is meeting with the president or other senior staff. Our template for a brief feels really dated and somewhat repetitive while sometimes that most important information gets buried among all the details. Does anyone have an example of what they use when preparing briefing materials for a meeting. Thanks in advance.

Good evening, all!

I am working on a prospect prioritization rubric for a client, and I'd like to get any ideas from people who may have done some thing similar. I'm having the most trouble with "Access", such as what relationships to rank, where a prospect, lives, etc. If anyone has any examples or ideas, I'd love to hear them!

Hi everyone

I work for a medium sized charity with multiple facilities in the state.

One of our newer centres is coming up to the 10-year anniversary, so the current 10-year naming rights are up for renewal. I’ll be approaching all donors to renew for another 10 years, this is new for our team. I’m having a challenging time understanding what value to give the named spaces. It would make sense that the value would increase from 10-years ago, but I’m also taking into account that when the building opened it was a huge campaign in the community and there was lots of media, opening event etc. This time around, we don’t have the capacity for much outside of just asking for renewals and inviting the donor in to see it. We also feel there won’t be the same motivation/capacity for folks to renew at previous amounts. If they don’t renew, we don’t have others in line to approach.

I would really appreciate hearing how others have approached this in their work. Thanks for your help.

Our national (Canadian) Charity is currently looking switching to a new donor management software Our national (Canadian) Charity is currently looking switching to a new donor management software solution. I am hoping to hear from other Canadian Charities - what do you use / recommend?. I am hoping to hear from other Canadian Charities - what do you use / recommend? (we have about 2, 000 donors). We want to be able to track gifts, track giving history, issue receipts, issue replacement receipts, generate cover letters for the receipts, etc. Free

I realized our friends in the various sales Reddits do a much better job of asking big overarching questions that provide insight into KPIs and metrics for their field. So, for those of us in frontline roles, let’s share our 2024 goals and how we’re feeling - and if you’re comfortable, your compensation!

For me: about $750,000 for a very immature major gift program. I’m feeling moderately confident. I also indirectly support about $1 million in CEO managed relationships for my org. My compensation is in the $150k range, so I am feeling the pressure to grow this portfolio quickly!

Looking forward to seeing what everyone is facing for the remainder of the year!

I'm heading up the build of a foundation that pulls in about $1M in fundraising revenues/yr but has a very small donorbase and no defined annual giving program, so we need to grow that. We have a website and social channels but zero staff or historical effort to build, and I need to focus my time on major gifts and partnerships. Do you think it is reasonable to hire a manager of marketing and communications at $80K salary to build and manage the digital (including email) fundraising and set a target of $100K net NEW revenues + targets for acquisition of new donors/subscribers + social followers?

Hey fellow fundraisers! I'm starting a new position as a Major Gifts Officer at my alma mater, a large public land grant university. I'll be supporting a smaller academic unit on a team of two, working directly with the unit's Director of Development. This role will focus solely on major gifts of $50K and above.

Some context:

• Coming from a small nonprofit where I was Director of Development & Marketing
• Previous org: 18 full-time staff, $3M+ budget
• Exceeded $1.1M fundraising goal in previous role
• Previous responsibilities included managing grants, annual fund, special events, major gifts, and all marketing

I'm excited about this new opportunity but also want to make sure I'm set up for success. My questions:

1. What advice do you have for transitioning from a small shop to a larger institution?
2. How can I best focus my efforts in a role dedicated to major gifts?
3. What strategies can I use to meet and exceed expectations in my first year?
4. Any tips for eventually working my way up to Director of Development at this larger institution?

Thanks in advance for any insights or experiences you can share!

Hi all! I have experience writing grants, some comms, etc, but I'm in a role now where I write appeal letters. I'm working through my first attempt, but I'm realizing it's a bit different than my previous experience. I've looked up some guides and such, but I'm wondering if there is a course (or something related) to help me develop my skills?

I know it will come in time, but we only do a few of these per year, so I'm hoping to speed up the process.

Any thoughts and ideas are much appreciated!

Hey everybody, this is my first post to this subreddit, hope everyone is well!!

Currently, I am in the third year of this project - trying to raise money to get a skatepark built on my campus. I am finding trouble completing my $$$ goal and I would love some advice. I have raised $125,000 from Student Senate out of the $200,000 required for this project. My school will not approve this project unless they have confidence my committee and I will raise the remaining $75,000. (My committee is not very big and we haven't made much progress yet)

We are a privately owned university just outside of Providence, RI - so we cannot ask for grants from the state (we won't qualify for these grants because the park is not open for public use - just students). My ideas going forward consist of

• Asking local banks for grants
• Asking local skate/surf shops for money exchange for some advertising space around the skatepark
• Contacting brands to see if they would sponsor our skatepark (Didn't get very far when we tried this but will still try)
• Brick path leading to the park - sell a brick for a sum of money and put donator's name on brick
• Reaching out to alumni for donations (It's hard to find alumni that fit the 'skater' category)
• Naming the park after a big donator (Where do we find this donator?)

If you have any suggestions, PLEASE let me know. I have a meeting August 7th where I need to give them at least some confidence we are able to raise the funds.

Hey dancers and teachers! I wrote a blog that contains ideas for the best fundraisers for sports with a calculated ROI and how many volunteers you will need.I want to enhance this blog or even create another one.

Anyone know of any existing articles, blogs, etc. that list ideas WITH the expected return, # of people needed, etc.?

Or what are some fundraisers you have done for your dancers that made the most profit? I don't want opinions, I want actual dollars.

Here is what I have so far: https://goandgive.com/best-fundraising-ideas-for-schools/

I have a donor, let’s call her Jill. She has the capacity to give large transformational gifts to my non profit and has done so. In addition to her large gifts, she regularly donates to our online fund a need appeals which are geared for non-major donors who give closer to $10-$500 annually. She closes out these fund a need appeals as soon as theyre up on the site, reaching goal right away.

Maybe you’re thinking wow, that’s amazing?! It is, but preparing these stories to align with the need, getting the photos, getting them up on the website is a lot of work for the fund team, to only have to take them down immediately after she calls to fund them all and having to source new stories and content to get up. These funding opportunities are meant to serve as a way for our annual donors to be a part of our mission and also bring in new donors. This donor’s support can and does go way beyond this.

Have any of you delicately had a conversation with a donor to dissuade them from giving in this way without getting in the weeds of fundraising strategies?

Hi everyone!

I have over 10 years of experience working in International Higher Education. I’ve had roles in recruitment/partnerships as well as major event planning for institutional open days. In the past five years I’ve managed regional strategies in higher ed for my previous institution as it pertains to outreach, engagement, recruitment, admissions and partnership development.

As a remote based member of staff there is rarely an opportunity to grow professionally as most of the time these types of roles are on campus for leadership. As such, I decided to apply for a Regional Major Gifts fundraising role at another university as their remote based development manager last year.

The employer was happy with the transferability of my skills and I was hired into the position with the promise of training. While my team mates are very supportive, the institution has had some transitions, restructures and budget cuts that have unfortunately left me a little bit alone in my getting up to speed. Also, my hiring manager left the institution just months after I came into post.

I have been trying so hard to teach myself (requested calls with people in the industry, listen to podcasts, a lot of googling, asking questions and just throwing myself into the work and hoping for the best) - but I’m a strategically minded person and my attempt to train myself has likely meant I haven’t learned basic best practices on donor relationship management, meetings, and stewardship etc.

Unfortunately I just found out there won’t be budget for me to attend a CASE conference this year.

Does anyone have any tips or advice for being a great regional major gifts officer? Or handy resources I could check out for learning the ropes? Thank you all in advance and for the amazing work you do!

I've just gotten a development director role at a smallish nonprofit. My background is in individual, so I'm not sure what's best when it comes to receiving grants and thanking those funders. My gut tells me that having them hear from me personally (outside of the regular acknowledgement process) can't hurt, but I'm curious to hear how others approach this?

My instinct says to reach out to the person who is our main contact to thank them for facilitating the grant, and let them know I'm looking forward to partnering with them. But is that overkill?

Hello! We are trying to get our nonprofit listed on business's payroll deduction section. So far, I have only found America Charities, but part of their process is an audit. We never had one as we have never made over $200K in profit.

Are there other ways, or should we bite it and have an audit? Thank you so much for your help in advance.