The Top 11 Fundraising Challenges Development Directors Face (Results from my Recent SURVEY)
Hey there, Development Director,
I see you, chasing every dollar, juggling the jobs of at least three people, and working so hard to keep your nonprofit funded and running. Being an organization’s primary fundraiser is a tough job, especially when you’re facing challenges that make things harder than they need to be.
I surveyed a group of Development Directors, to get a better handle on what you’re all facing. I found 11 specific challenges, but the good news is that they’re definitely fixable! So fixable that I’ve created a training just for Development Directors to help them learn to tackle these challenges and start raising more money in a more sustainable way.
The three biggest things Development Directors wanted help with were:
Gaining TIME back in your schedule (so you can actually move from reactive to proactive, strategic fundraising)
Learning how to find, cultivate, and secure larger gifts from INDIVIDUALS in a way that feels comfortable and not pushy
Getting more help from your BOARD members! (Like, helping them see you can't just turn the faucet on and off - they must help too!)
Sometimes, You Don’t Know What You Don’t Know
When faced with challenges, it’s easy to feel insecure. You’re a professional fundraiser, shouldn’t you already know how to cultivate a major donor? Well...maybe? Most of us entire the arena of professional fundraising with very little training, picking up what we know on the job and from watching other people.
How did you become a fundraising professional? Was it your original plan? Very few people who enter the world of nonprofit have traditional fundraising degrees or training in scaling an organization through a major-gifts program.
In my recent survey, 91% of Development Directors said they kind of fell into their fundraising role. They were volunteers first, or had a different role at the organization and someone thought they’d be a good fundraiser. Only 9% of my respondents had a degree in the field.
So stop feeling like an imposter, just because you don’t know everything there is to know. As you face your challenges take comfort in the fact that a lot of other fundraising professionals face them, too.
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Let’s take a look at the Top 11 Challenges Facing Nonprofit Development Directors. Does anything feel familiar?
The 11 Challenges of Development Directors
Challenge #1: “I Don’t Have Time to Be Strategic!”
The top challenge Development Directors reported facing was not having enough hours in the day to be strategic with fundraising.
I heard things like: "I wish everyone understood how much time and energy events take and pull me away from other fundraising strategies."
I hear you loud and clear.
There’s only one way to get time back in your schedule--by maximizing every hour you spend fundraising. That means you have to start doing things that generate the size donations that will fund your mission, and stop doing the things that take too many hours and resources.
But, how do you convince your boss and board that you can’t spend time all your time in reactive mode - doing the things that don’t lead to the size gifts that fully fund your mission?
To start, your annual financing plan must help them see the things you need to be allowed to stop doing so that you can repurpose that time and energy on the fundraising activities that will actually help them grow.
Always start with the numbers. You must align your hours with dollars on your plan.
Challenge #2: “I’m Trapped in the Small-Dollar Spin Cycle!”
A Development Director in my recent survey said: “There's an assumption that I can do it all, and if it brings in money, I should be doing it. But this keeps my wheels from grabbing tread on what really makes the biggest difference, because I am trying to do it all."
I knew exactly how she was feeling.
I’ve been in her shoes. But, that feeling didn’t change until I learned to spend more of my time and energy on the things that lead to larger gifts.
But, most often I see nonprofits and their boards spending time and energy on the activities that lead to small gifts. They focus on the fact that some money is generated, but don’t consider the cost of the time spent or the opportunities missed.
As I looked over the responses to my survey, I concluded that Development Directors want off the small-dollar spin cycle, but leaders have to let them.
Everyone must prioritize their fundraising time on the actual activities that bring in larger gifts. Then you’ll fully fund your mission.
Executive Directors, Board Members, out there, you’ve got to hear me: If your Development Director only has time to do these things, it’s time to release them from small-gift jail and make a shift in activities:
✔️ Appeals & Events
✔️ Odd competitions
✔️ Facebook fundraisers
✔️ Collecting items for the silent auction
It’s not that Development Directors shouldn’t ever do these things. It’s that these activities are largely transactional rather than relational. The large gifts you need to fully fund your mission will come from relationships, not transactions, so transactional activities should never be prioritized over relational ones.
Challenge #3: “Major Gifts Take Time!”
One participant said it directly . . ."My board doesn't understand it takes time to build relationships. You can't just ask strangers for a $100K gift. It takes time and the payoff isn't immediate."
I can’t tell you the number of times in 2020 I’ve shared Greg Warner’s recent 2020 Major Gift Benchmark Report by MarketSmart.
And I’m STILL pointing to that one specific page that dissects ‘How long does it take to secure a major-gift?’
The vast majority of respondents in that report (81%!) said, “Six months to two years.”
When leaders don’t understand how major individual giving works, their expectations are usually off. They think, “We met a person capable of making a major gift, so why don’t we have it?” If you aren’t having frank conversations about a reasonable timeline, you need to start. It will help them understand that you’re not treading water, you’re building a relationship that supports your eventual ask.
Let me lay one other element on top of this: your pipeline.
Sometimes, leadership gets antsy about the length of time it’s taking to get to the ask. Why? Because there aren’t enough other donors in the pipeline.
When this is the case, they’re bound to be hyper-focused on just a few gifts because, well, you’ve got to get that one because there aren't too many others.
What to do?
You’ve got to learn how to attract a full and steady pipeline of donors so that your pipeline is always full. Start putting more eggs into different baskets, and everyone can relax a little bit.
Challenge #4: “Shh...I Don’t Really Know How Major Gifts Work.”
Can we talk about the elephant in the room?
Sometimes, I find that fundraisers themselves don’t entirely understand the step-by-step process of individual donor cultivation. Therefore, they struggle leading their board members to do the same.
“I understand how to fill out applications that ask for money or talk about sponsorships with corporate reps, but when it comes to talking with people on an individual basis, it's hard to understand the path forward. It's not as defined.”
Here’s the scary part - that elephant in the room.
It feels like you’re supposed to know everything about fundraising. You’re the Development Director, right? It feels scary to tell the Executive Director and Board Members that you need more training to successfully secure larger donations from individuals.
But, with what’s expected of nonprofit fundraisers these days, there’s no way you can be an expert at it all. Seriously - you wear so many hats.
You’re doing lots right, but it’s likely you’re leaving money on the table if you don’t have a specific plan in place to lead your Top 30 Individual donors to their best gift this year. But, when you have a step-by-step plan in place to secure those gifts, then you’ll reach your goals and you’re spending time on the things that yield the largest amount of money.
But, you can’t do it alone. You need to be equipped to lead your board to this understanding also. These skills are worth cultivating through training. Can I let you in on a secret? My most successful students aren’t the ones who “work the room” and have the “shake-hands + kiss-babies” thing down. They are the ones who learn the step-by-step path you must lead donors on every year to secure their best gift. It’s plan + discipline + habits. That’s where the magic happens.
Challenge #5: “I Feel Alone in This.”
Do you feel like everyone has opinions and expectations for what you should be doing, but nobody is actually “in it” with you? You’re not alone. In fact, I’d say 90% of the nonprofit students I work with (a ton of executive directors!), report feeling the same way.
So I wasn’t surprised when I heard things like, "Our organization has never had a major gifts program and my Executive Director does very little actual fundraising or stewardship." in my Development Director survey.
There are some sticky, in-the-middle challenges as the Development Director. Here’s what I hear most often:
“I feel like MY BOARD expects me to know how to do everything. But, I don’t have formal fundraising training, so it’s hard for me to grow our major gifts program.”
“MY ED hates fundraising - she’s hired me because she doesn’t want to do it, so I feel like I can’t ask for help.”
So, who do you turn to?
I’ve been called a therapist more times than I can count. Obviously, I’m not a real therapist.
What I think that means is I’m a third-party, listening ear, and ‘tell you you’re-not-crazy and there is a way upward’ person.
Sometimes my students just need to hear there is a plan and way to get through this. Because there is!
Challenge #6: “I Dread Anything Like Sales!”
The nice thing about a grant proposal is you don’t have to ask it out for coffee before you fill it out. Major gifts fundraising does require managing a relationship, which involves making a series of invitations and trying to take things to the next level. And a lot of you, I’ve learned, are very intimidated by that aspect.
One survey participant said "I feel like I can handle myself once I'm in the meeting, because that feels like the relationship part, but getting the meetings feels like the salesy part. And that feels scary."
My students move from dread to dollar when they learn two things:
How to create great donor experiences that move a prospect to a yes.
How to lead board members in a way that prioritizes their time on the size gifts they need.
My students who learn my methodology stop wasting time on the activities that take too much time without sufficient ROI. They are confident relationship builders. And it pays off: my students without any previous fundraising experience regularly secure 4-, 5-, and 6- figure gifts.
Challenge #7: “My ED Thinks Major Donors are Impossible to Find!”
Fundraisers - Lots of people hop on my calendar to ask me a specific question. That question?
“How do I find major donors?”
This brings us to the seventh challenge I heard in the survey.
One survey respondent said: "My Executive Director thinks that major donors are impossible to 'find'."
In one way, that Executive Director is right, but not how she thinks.
The real answer is: You don’t “find” major donors at all. You attract them.
This is sometimes a major mindset shift.
If you want to find major donors, you’ve got to ask yourself if you’re doing the types of things that attract major donors.
Here’s what I mean:
Donors need to hear you passionately share your plan to grow your programs and learn how their giving can propel the organization forward, thus changing a life.
In addition to heart and stories, large, investment-level donors need stakeholder discussions.
They need to know their gift is a good investment.
They need to know that it serves their mission for giving it to you.
They need to be asked.
If you’re stopping at heart and stories, but not methodically sharing, explaining, or welcoming financial (investment-level) conversations, you will never attract large donors.
Stop trying to FIND large donors. That never works. Start drawing them in by doing the things that show them they want to be involved.
Challenge #8: “I Need Access to the Financials.”
I love giving webinars. And heaven knows we’ve all attended a lot of them in 2020! My favorite part has become the Q & A. When I spoke to an amazing audience brought together by Firespring in July, I got an interesting question from a Development Director.
The question?
“Should I as the Development Director have access and input to the budget?”
The answer?
A robust and exuberant YES!
There’s no way for a Development Director to successfully do their job without access to the budget and financial information. Without knowing deficits and needs, it makes asks and campaigns random guesses, not strategic efforts.
Here’s the shift that needs to be made when it comes to setting fundraisers up for success.
Fundraisers:
👎Should NOT be in a silo where their sole rule is appeals, events, grants
👍Should be equipped to create a strategic approach to securing the organization’s overall need
👎Should NOT simply be given a number to hit every year
👍Should be a huge part of establishing the financial need so that they can create a true plan to reach that need.
But most of all, not understanding the financials reduces the confidence of the solicitors. In my survey, 41% said they hadn’t done a solicitation in the months leading up to COVID and an additional 41% said they had done less than 4.
Challenge #9: “Our Board Neither Gives Nor Solicits.”
One survey respondent said, "Our board does not give gifts or solicit. Fundraising is completely up to me."
Gulp.
Here’s the thing. You’ve got to remember that board members aren’t trained in fundraising.
So you have to demystify the process for Board Members - you know, help them to see it’s not that scary and can actually be a great experience.
One of the greatest benefits of fundraisers soliciting their Board Members is that it takes the mystery out of it. Your Board Members learn by experience that it’s not painful and open up their networks.
So, what to do?
Create a great experience for each board member.
Customize it to their mission for giving.
Show the board how warm and approachable ‘the ask’ can be by doing it to them.
You can take lots of the scariness out of the board’s fundraising activities when you model it for them in the right way.
But as a fundraiser, you’ve got to know how to do it! And in my recent survey, only 27.9% of Development Directors were soliciting board members. And over 42.6% were simply not soliciting at all or because of a give/get. They’re missing out!
Challenge #10: “My Board Hates Asking for Money!”
There’s a pretty direct phrase I often hear from fundraisers. What is it?
“My board hates asking for money.”
I understand. Board Members are experts in something else, but when it comes to sitting down one-on-one and asking someone for a large gift, it feels uncomfortable and frustrating.
Like lots of fundraisers, board members are from other industries who haven’t ever needed to know how to fundraise before either! So, how do you overcome this?
In my new Professional Development Course for fundraisers, we dig into the Board dynamics and this exact phrase about hating ‘the ask’.
Here’s what I tell my students when they need to motivate the board to fundraise:
Educate the board – ‘the ask’ is only one step of the entire process
Most supporting cast members will not do ‘the ask’ – help them see they get to do the fun part
Your energy is contagious - you have a huge role in pivoting their mindset from dread to drive
Get everyone doing something (thank you calls, giving a tour, host a social)
Create non-threatening support metrics for the board - activity metrics over dollar metrics
Challenge #11: “Seriously, My Board Refuses to Fundraise.”
"I work at a private school, and the Board has never been involved in fundraising until last year. They are very reluctant to participate in the ask or even introductions," said one respondent to my survey.
This is a little different than “hating to ask for money.” This is more like, “Doesn’t realize they have a role in fundraising.”
You may think it’s very obvious that board members should be involved in fundraising, but it’s not unusual for people to join a nonprofit board with only a vague idea of the responsibilities and expectations.
Do you have written ‘job-descriptions’ for your Board Members? Or are duties and expectations more of a handshake thing?
What to do? Work with your executive director to:
Set expectations early through written board member job descriptions.
Sit one-on-one before the board member is recruited and talk through the types of activities that are expected from them and that lead to major-gifts
Identify where they feel confident and where they’ll need training with the skills they’ve never done before (my guess? donor cultivation & solicitations)
Ask their permission to help teach them how to fundraise (Just because they’re successful in their corporate career doesn’t mean they know how to fundraise)
Lead, guide, lead, guide, lead, and guide
I know this stuff can be tricky, and that sometimes your board is more receptive to an outside voice. That’s why I require a Board Workshop when I teach my methodology to nonprofits.
Meeting Challenges, Fully-Funding Your Organization
Development Directors, I salute you. I see how hard you’re working and the things you’re accomplishing, sometimes against incredible odds. If you recognize your challenges in this list, I want to make sure you know that there are ways around, past, and through them. When you’re ready to start tackling these challenges, I invite you to reach out.
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P.S. Whenever you’re ready…
1. Follow me on LinkedIn for content and resources first
I give away trade secrets and insider info every week - the same lessons I teach my clients about what they can do to start attracting larger dollars and generate more unrestricted money for your nonprofit.
2. Read my WHITEPAPER to see if your overall approach to financing your mission every year might be keeping you from growing.
Here you’ll learn THE BIG FUNDRAISING SECRET that keeps organizations from having the funds to achieve what’s in their strategic plans. Click here to get it.
3. Work with me to reimagine your overall approach to revenue generation
Executive Directors - If you'd like to diversify funding and scale your gen-ops dollars, it might be time to invest in your team. You can apply to work with me here.
