Even though, I raised millions of pounds for various causes since 1994…. like many fundraisers I could not help but notice, my job of growing the income year on year kept on getting tougher and tougher.  And definitely, much more pressured as the years went on.

I and my fellow fundraisers throughout the sector seemed to be stuck on our own “fundraising hamster wheels” – get the money in as quickly and as cheaply as possible, reach target, grow the income.  All and any money is good, as long as it comes in with no or very limited strings attached (stewardship will be granted within the charity’s rules – the less we need to do/can get away with the better).

And although I could see it was getting harder to connect with prospective donors, the only answer seemed to be increase the existing effort, so my team (like the rest of the sector) hired more staff to increase our “more of the same”  efforts.

In short, if we wanted...

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Are your non-fundraising colleagues obsessed with NEW business?

Are your targets all about getting the "money in"?

If you want to grow your fundraising income you need to know where the real finish line is - and it's NOT your bank account.....

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The world has changed.

Funders have changed how they find and select charities.

Are you still prospecting and chasing - or are you all about being found?

Watch this video to see why.

I recently wrote a blog called “Fundraising Directors - Are you harder to hire or harder to keep?”. The post basically argued when charities hire a Development Director (DD), the adverts and job descriptions lead on how they’re poised for growth and have ambitious fundraising plans.

That was the hiring bit……

This blog post (part 2) wants to look at what happens next – once you accept the job - is it a keeper?

Just for background; I have worked in Fundraising for over 20 years, 8 years of which I was a DD. I have worked in-house for charities and for funders, so have worked closely with approximately 350 charities from Start Ups to Big Brands and all other shapes and sizes in between.

I have spent the last two weeks doing coaching calls with DD's, predominantly from the UK, working for medium and small charities and representing a wide variety of causes. All were heading up the fundraising for their charity.

Throughout the sessions...

So, a bit of a departure from my usual story post, but this topic has come up a lot over the last few weeks so I thought I would just jump right in:

Why is the position of Development Director so hard to hire for?

• It is well documented that there is a high turnover of Development Directors (DD).
• Many CEO’s say they struggle to hire and retain DD’s.

This is my opinion. Just for background; I have worked in Fundraising for over 20 years, 8 of which I was a DD. I have worked in-house for charities and for funders, so I have worked closely with approximately 350 charities from start ups to big brands and all other shapes and sizes in between.

Yesterday, I googled job vacancies for DD’s, I read 32 job adverts and job descriptions (JD’s) for big, medium and small charities in 4 different countries (UK, America, Australia and Canada). And yes, I probably do need to get out more…

This is clearly not a scientific study by any stretch of...

You are the Fundraising Director or Head of Department.  You’re in a Senior Leadership Team meeting, about to commence item 3 on the agenda “The Fundraising Strategy”.  Everyone is keen to hear from you as your charity has been in survival mode for years.  You’re expected to show them how you’re going to absolutely keep a deficit at bay, grow the income and at least start the upward trajectory towards the dream world of “thrive mode”.  Everyone around the table is thinking – please for the love of God let there be growth!

So, with resources low and expectations high you turn on the projector and dive into your presentation:

• The objectives are (as they are automatically every year) grow new income and retain existing business by increasing team targets.
• You go through each income stream and show how you are going to increase activity which will in turn increase income.
• Increase staff numbers – but only in...

So, you are the Fundraising Director or Head of a Department. You have just opened your calendar to see what the week has in store for you this week:

• Firstly, it has the normal back to back meetings, but clever you, you have planted a couple of “fake ones” just to make sure there is some breathing space peppered throughout the week. Your whole team and various other people have access to your diary and boy does it fill up fast.
  
  
• There is the normal reoccurring stuff, Senior Team, one to ones with line reports, a few monthly ones with the wider organisation and then just a whole bunch of internal updates and whatnot. 
  
  
• There’s a meeting with a donor that seems to have appeared, which is good. You are not sure what it’s about, but the Account Manager has sent you an invite to brief you the day before.
  
  
• This looks like another week of “canapes for dinner” as there are several evening networking events you are down for...

So, you are the Fundraising Director or Head of a Department.  Tomorrow is your monthly one to one with your boss.  Time to do a quick search through your notebook for the actions you agreed to and either do them or at least get a few balls rolling.  And then there is the 10-minute preparation:

• Email your team to check on the latest numbers, how are we doing against target?
• Gently massage the pipeline probabilities (weightings) just enough to stop the “let’s discuss the hell out of this, but don’t expect any help or insight, it’s a rant only from me (I have a lot of people to blame), please for the love of God get the money in somehow” conversation. Ironically, when you started this job you moaned like hell about your predecessor’s “fantasy pipeline”, it all looked so much better than the reality you discovered.  Now you’ve walked in their shoes, you wish you were not so quick to judge….
• Print out your...