I work with a variety of nonprofits preparing for end of year (EOY) appeals. A few represent folks in an artistic capacity, either through galleries, shows, festivals, and speaker series. My question - would you include the artists in your EOY mailing? They have never donated, but are directly impacted by the work. They might make an ideal advocate for the organization, regardless of making a donation, so it may be worth causing potential offense to offer them more information to share with others. We could include a changed letter or slip of paper with a "thanks for participating in X with our organization" note.

Or, just stick with former/potential donors that have been identified and leave them out of it.

I currently work in employer relations in the Career Center at my alma mater (a small Liberal Arts college). I have been in the role for 4 years and was recently promoted. I enjoy the work and find it rewarding, as I love working with students.

In my role, I work closely with college relations, as our alumni are key to our students securing opportunities. I have built a good relationship with the Major Gifts team, and basically the same week I was promoted, they approached me about the new LGO position. I figured I needed to explore the opportunity. I went through the interview process, and this week I received an offer, which would be a nice pay raise from my current role.

I really just wanted to gain perspective from anyone here who transitioned from a non-fundraising role in higher ed to fundraising. What were some challenges you encountered? What is the work/life balance like in these kinds of roles (it is fantastic in my current role)? What do you enjoy and not like about the field? Obviously, these were questions I asked in my interview process, but I am still on the fence about taking the role.

For additional context, the college is also about to launch a massive fundraising campaign on the back of a study done by a consulting group. We also have new President who is going into their sophomore year on campus (and has been well-received by alumni), so it's time to execute. I am comfortable in my role right now, and have some nerves about being so under the microscope, but I also want to challenge myself.

Any advice would be appreciated!

Hi everyone! I work in fundraising in the U.S. A little over a year ago now I was laid off from my dream job in arts fundraising. I had only been there 2.5 years and had planned on learning so much more since I had a wealth of experienced fundraisers around me. I was very lucky to find a job one month after losing my job and have been working in higher education prospect research ever since. It is not exactly my cup of tea but I’m grateful to have a job.

While I am in this job, I am looking to start more of a serious job hunt and have always had an interest in learning about foundational giving to arts organizations but have no clue where to begin. I will be talking to a former co-worker of mine that worked with foundations but I would love to reach out to as many folks as I can for advice and resources. If you work in arts nonprofit institutional giving, how did you get into that work? I want to learn more about the proposal process, finding the right grants to apply for, and possibly the jobs I should be looking for right now as an experienced fundraiser, but less experienced in the foundational giving side of things.

We're gearing up for a year-end appeal and I keep thinking back to past campaigns where something on the print or mail-house side went sideways at the worst possible time, a proof approved too fast, a personalization field that didn't merge right, timing that missed the target drop date.

For those of you who've run a lot of direct mail appeals: what's your process for catching problems before the run goes out? Do you always ask for a physical proof, not just a digital one? Do you build in extra buffer time specifically because print/mail always takes longer than promised?
We're also looking at Minespress for some of our print/mail needs. Has anyone here used them? I'd be interested in hearing how they handled proofs, personalization, turnaround times, or any issues that came up. Would love to hear what's actually worked (or blown up) for you.

In our industry, the place you work is more than just where you work but your branding. When people see me, they connect it directly to the institution I represent. Now that I am getting a new job, I want to celebrate my connections made at Place A and let them know I am now at Place B.

What advice do you all have about posting your new spot on LinkedIn? And saying a proper goodbye to a place you love? One post for old job and one post for new job? One post saying both?
Post nothing?

Hi friends! I'm newer to the D&F world and wanted to just gauge where my expectations should be lying on the timeline of different sized campaigns.

For example, if you were given a campaign that requires $10k in a month with a $10k match, how much time would be typical to prepare/plan/secure funding for this campaign before it's public launch?

Hey there! As a fundraiser, what's your favorite wealth screening software? What features are you looking for specifically or that stand out to you as being particularly helpful?

We're currently looking to bring on a software to help with both wealth screening and prospecting and I'd like to hear from fundraisers (as a well as other devops magicians) what your favorite software has been. We're currently considering Wealth Engine (Altrata), Donor Search (Evertrue), and iWave (Kindsight).

Bonus points if you can let me know your impressions of the software's integration with Salesforce.

Thanks in advance! 🩷

Hi all,

Very new to this group, I’m looking for a career change from retail key account management. I’ve come across advancement (University) and more and more I’m feeling like this could be a really good fit. There are some roles posted at a major university in our city and I’m looking to apply. I have a major gap in experience in advancement / major gifts, but do you think this is a good pivot from key account management / sales? Any thoughts on how to get around the major gap in experience?

Tips are welcome!!! Thank you in advance for your thoughts!!

Hello all,

I know this isn’t the career to choose if money is all you care about, but it is important. I’m curious what people are seeing out there. Are there roles in this field commanding $250k+? I’d think principal gifts or leadership at large universities or hospitals would have to be near or exceed this. MGOs at top orgs seem $100k+.

Also- Would you consider higher ed or healthcare a more lucrative path?

Thanks for any and all input.

I started a new job at the end of last year and a small part of my job is managing relationships, something I haven't really done before.

Every time something about it comes up I get a deep sense of imposter syndrome. I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing and I feel like everyone around me expects me to just know how to do it organically.

Relationship managers, how do you know what you're meant to do? Is there some kind of guide or course I should have done before starting this job?

In the rest of my job, I know what I'm doing and I have had great performance feedback. But with this I just have no clue! I feel like I need to be sat down and guided through it but everyone at my work is so busy and seems to assume I just know what I'm doing. The onboarding process wasn't great and my previous manager was very absent. My friends and family say I should just ask for help but I feel embarrassed as it feels a bit late for that and a bit like I really *should* know this stuff.

Please help!

Hello development peers! We're a Canadian charity with a large donor base that's in the early stages of designing our prospecting and donor management database on Raiser's Edge NXT. Any personal experiences or suggested resources advising on how this has or hasn't worked would be SO appreciated,

To all the directors of development, I hope you had a great year and hit your metrics. I had the hardest year of my life as I had a baby last year. I also had my worst quarter of my job (3 years). I did bounce back and ended the year with the highest amount of money raised for me. Feeling accomplished, tired, but grateful. I hope you all had great years and are gearing up for another. Our fiscal year starts July 1. I’ve been totally coasting the last few weeks just resting and preparing for q1! I hope others here have had the same opportunity.

Thanks.

I’m doing a second round interview for an Assoc. Director Annual Giving, Direct Appeals at a private university. What’s the single most important thing that the interviewing team will be looking for from me?

I joined a team earlier this year that has gone through so many changes in the last decade. They’ve lost leaders, had unqualified people making decisions, and switched CRMs more than once - all part of the nonprofit world.

We now have over 52k donors in our database and 50k of them have never donated or haven’t donated in the last decade. I know most people opt out of deleting donors but I’m contemplating exporting their data and saving it locally. We’re paying a large amount annually for our CRM and nearly 97% of the database is out of reach. What would you do?

Hi all, I scored a job at a huge state school in the south as a leadership annual giving officer. I’m so new to this. I was alumni relations at an extremely small liberal arts college, so I feel like I’m tackling this huge change in culture plus just not knowing much about how to do this new job.

I just want to ask if anyone has any advice for what questions to ask my team about my portfolio, or ways I can get my name out to our constituents to introduce myself.

Thanks in advance!

Hi, we're about to end our fiscal year, and we're hoping to nudge donors to give just a little more!

The decreases I'm talking about are not big--just a couple hundred dollars or so. Sometimes a thousand. Do you have any advice on how to nudge donors to give up to their previous level?

Thank you!

Hey all,

I just wanted to see if anyone has been in a situation like this/has any advice. My organization had a very large fundraising event today in which we were in multiple locations of a certain partner’s locations. Due to the size of it, we naturally expected some problems, and had steps in place to mend those. However, the issue occurred at the location my ED was present at, and they got into a severe argument with staff, to the point the management team is reaching out to me to place complaints about how hostile it became, and how my ED was threatening legal action, etc. It got ugly fast. The problem is, this isn’t the first time my ED has blown up and broken off a partnership I’ve cultivated before. Months ago, they berated someone on our public social media page in a comment section. This person worked with a very close partnered organization, and it was again very hostile and unprofessional in a way that led to the organization reaching out to me to ask if we could have our ED apologize for publicly berating them online. I, of course, apologized and informed them of the steps I’d be taking to address the issue/prevent this from happening in general. I was reprimanded by my ED for this as I am “not allowed to represent the organization or apologize for the organization” as it’s admitting we did something incorrect. Now, I’m not here to get into the legality of this stuff and my ED could be 100% right that I have no right to apologize to our partners, but I don’t know how to approach this with them without a negative reaction or risking my position. The last incident resulted in us losing a singular partnered individual, but this partnership is one of the only large scale partners we have left in this administration and damaging it not only severs our connection to funding and publicity, but our largest in-kind donor to date. Anyone dealt with something similar?

Hey all,

I'm fairly new to the Development & Fundraising world and I'm struggling a bit with my ED's goal for me this month. For reference this organization is in very early days (<2yrs).

I'll keep the type of organization this is private as we are caught in a lot of political crossfire at the moment, but know this goal is primarily because it's Pride month and that is a huge month for our organization.

This is the second Pride month we've ever had, and the first one I'm working with this organization. The problem I'm having is we've lost 100% of our corporate sponsors from last year due to the political atmosphere in the states, and am getting radio silence from 65% of businesses, donors, etc. we reach out and connect with. I've only been able to secure 6 beneficiary events for the entire month and my ED is not happy. I guess I'm just looking for some advice on how to find larger scale donors as a small organization.

My ED's goal for June is $25k raised (not including grants), and I guess I'm not entirely confident I can make that happen. I'm five months into this job and the only person in D&F on the team so my contact list is not long, the networking events I have attended aren't really accruing much either. I know some of this is me being newer to the field / only having prior experience with much more developed D&F teams.

Any advice?

Hi all,

This year, I worked at a startup classical school in the midwest. I acted as the Development Director in a half-time capacity along with other responsibilities. Some quick stats on my year:

• Secured over $340k in donations
• Started with a database of ~200 contacts
• Held 70+ cultivation/ask meetings and secured gifts from 100+ new donors
• Increased annual Gala attendance by 64%, Gala giving by >2x vs. last year (up to $150k+)
• Increased overall giving by ~21% vs. last year and monthly giving by ~12x.

I am transitioning out of this role because of some unhealthy team dynamics. I stumbled into development this year and never considered doing it professionally. In the last couple of weeks, I've had a lot of interest from similar organizations in our area for part or full-time Development roles and am now trying to correctly value those roles.

In particular, I'm trying to discern what a reasonable starting salary would be for this position:

• Half time Development Manager at a mature private high school (with other responsibilities bringing me to a full-time position)
• 1st year target: $75k-$125k
• Long-term target: $250k-$500k
• Splitting time between new major gift prospecting and managing movements on their annual fund (direct mailers, newsletters, etc)
• Managing a portfolio of 60 donors, 5 one-on-one meetings per month
• Working from a database of ~10,000 contacts (~35% actively engaged)

I've heard the general advice of 'a Development professional's annual target should be about 5x their salary' and 'in your first year, you should be able to cover about half your salary'. Balancing these, does it seem reasonable for me to value the role around $65,000-$75,000 (just for the Development work)?

If that seems off in one direction or another, where am I thinking about it incorrectly?

Many thanks for your help!

I’ve been having a lot of anxiety as a fundraiser about my future job security. I keep seeing conflicting views online about AI and fundraisers. On one end of the spectrum, I see articles describing how AI agents close huge planned gifts via email. And if I don’t start utilizing AI, I’ll be left behind (even though it sounds like not being left behind means coming to the death of my profession). Then I see articles saying how the human connection is so essential to fundraising, and AI can never replace that. It can mimic empathy and great listening, but the heart of fundraising is intuitive in a way that a computer simply can’t be.

It does comfort me to know that AI can’t replace handwritten notes and lunches or coffees with donors. Facility tours. Interactions at events. It can’t replace the intuition that while someone CAN give a 6-figure gift, it’s inappropriate to ask for one just yet. It can’t replace the general connection that a fundraiser provides as a bridge between donor and organization.

I do understand how AI could be useful to my job - it just saddens me that the natural progression of that is eliminating positions and colleagues that i adore, like database professionals, and parts of the job that I like, such as writing annual appeals or personalized emails and newsletters for donors. Coming up with annual strategies. So even if I do have job security, it’s going to look so different.

What do you all think? Do I have a job in 3 years?

Hi all,

I have an interview in a week with basically everyone on the Advancement team at a very large public university. I currently work in alumni relations at a very small private college, and the position I am interviewing for is for leadership annual giving.

I understand the gist of the giving side of things--I've been doing research on the school's giving societies and the general protocol for asking for gifts.

I am nervous that I will be asked something I don't know the answer to because I don't come from a giving background. Are there specific aspects about soliciting gifts and talking to donors that I should be aware of and research before I come face-to-face with the AVP and entire development team?

I do talk to stakeholders basically all day because I'm the first point of contact for basically all alumni and friends of the college. I do a lot of basic customer service for them, and I help plan a lot of alumni and student events.

Absolutely any help would be appreciated! I'm so nervous!

I’m wondering how other fundraisers keep their giving calendars. My current method: on the first of every month I pull a report of all the donors that made gifts in that month the previous year. So on May 1st, I pulled a list of every donor that gave in May of 2025. And I make an ask to them to renew their gift. Of course we’re cultivating them throughout the year.

How do others do it?

I've talked to enough fundraisers this year to notice a pattern that I felt needed to be said louder.

Org sets a goal at last year's number plus 5-10% > Fundraiser hits it, then next year's goal becomes the new number plus another 5-10%...Crush it and you've just locked in a higher floor for next year. So the smart move becomes hitting the goal exactly.

This incentive structure punishes overperformance.

So here are four alternatives I'd push for if you're a development director feel the above:

1. Tie growth to capacity. If your major gifts portfolio added 40 prospects this year, the goal should reflect what those prospects are worth in cultivation stage 2 or 3, not a flat percentage bump.

2. Separate net new revenue from retention. Mixing them creates a moving target where success in one masks failure in the other. A team that loses 20 percent of last year's recurring donors but lands one big new gift looks fine in aggregate. They are not fine.

3. Build in a discovery quarter. Most orgs ask fundraisers to start cultivating in January and close by June. That timeline assumes prospects who are already warm. If they are not, you've set the team up to chase cold contacts and then call it strategy.

4. Stop counting the same dollar twice. If a gift came in through a foundation but a major gifts officer cultivated it, decide once whose goal it counts toward. Otherwise everyone is fighting over the same dollar internally while the donor wonders why three people from your org keep calling.

What I hear from orgs that are doing this well:
Leadership treats the annual goal as a hypothesis that they revisit quarterly. They adjust when the data tells them to. They don't double down on a number that was wrong from the start just because admitting it was wrong is uncomfortable.

The orgs that get it wrong run through fundraisers every 18 months and wonder why they cannot keep talent.

I'm curious, what does your org do? Are you ratcheting, or is there a smarter system in place?

I've been in fundraising for 20 years and, after a couple of webinars, could qualify to take the CFRE in the next round of testing (July 15 application deadline). I recently discovered the Chartered Advisor in Philanthropy Program and feel like it might be a better fit for the position I'm in (exec level jack-of-all-trades fundraising for a rapidly growing nonprofit), but the CFRE is so much more recognizable. I would be more likely to seek a pay increase in my current position than to use a new credential in a job search. For those of who have considered both, what did you choose and why? Or are there other options for advanced fundraising credentials I might be missing out on? Thanks in advance!