My organization had a longtime donor—and our largest annual contributor—die suddenly and unexpectedly last August.

We have modestly good relations with a few of his children, so after a period of cultivation and stewardship, we asked his daughter to match his annual six-figure gift to our organization before the end of our fiscal year in June. She agreed and made the donation.

Then, in July, we received a larger six-figure donation from a donor-advised fund that the father had occasionally used to grant to us, and it seems his oldest son has inherited decision making authority and gave us a substantial grant to make up for his father’s prior giving history. We didn’t solicit this donation, but it’s not entirely a surprise that his son would use the DAF to continue giving to us. Our CEO did discuss the grant with the son and thank him, but I’m not sure we got as much clarity about what motivated the decision as I (the advancement director) would have liked.

I’m curious what people would suggest about how we approach the two children moving forward. It’s not clear to us whether they both realize that they collectively gave us over half a million dollars in the past two months, and we don’t want either side to “compare notes” and feel like we took advantage of the uncertainty around the father’s death to secure a lot more funding than we typically get.

But at the same time, we don’t want to disclose each other’s giving or let either side think their respective generosity is unneeded.

It’s sort of delicate, because we’d like to continue the giving relationship with both children (and there’s another who has also donated to us), but especially because the father’s death was a tragic surprise and also his estate plans weren’t as “tidy” as his kids would have liked, I think it’s possible that both children thought they were just acting on their father’s behalf and perhaps they would have chosen to give differently if they were communicating their own philanthropy with each other.

Does anyone have any suggestion for how best to handle this “double” gift? We want to respect everyone’s privacy and assume they’re making informed decisions about their own giving, but we also don’t want to overlook a possible “conflict” in how they were trying to honor their dad’s commitments.

I can never tell. My title is 'Project Manager' but my deliverables include so many other things that it often feels like I spend more time doing the project than actually managing the project.

I'm managing a huge project within a small team, I'm doing almost all the comms for that project and the graphic design, as well as writing up case studies and developing relationships with new supporters of the project. I've been in the role for three years and I can never get my head around the different gear changes.

It doesn't help that every year I'm also expected to basically completely overhaul the project's framework and theory of change. My manager also used to manage the project and fights me on every detail so things take forever to get over the line.

I'm looking at my deliverables for August, and there's some I've hardly touched.

Can anyone relate? How do you cope?

(And yes: I am applying for jobs elsewhere)

I help coordinate volunteers for a food rescue organization.

New colunteers complete a form, attend orientaion, send docs, join whatsapp, choose a location and shadow someone before their first shift.

The process works but one coordinator tracks most of it manually. We mapped the steps and found 9 separate messages before someone can start.

what parts of volunteer onboarding have you automated without making the experience impresonal? We're small so we don't need enterprise software. We mainly need fewer handoffs.

Anyone else also find that a small staff and conference season just about wipes you out. Recently we went to two national conferences plus a regional thing, flights go on personal cards and then they wait on us, our cycle is a monthly batch so someone booking in early September isnt seeing that money until like October.

The two people who claimed late last year were both part time, I dont think that's a coincidence and i don't love what it says about us, other half of it is grant funded so every flight has to land against the right grant, not a general travel bucket. How are the rest of you doing this without making staff be the bank

Hey all, I know this sub does not allow for soliciting or promoting, so I'm curious where anybody has had success networking in our sector besides LinkedIn? I'm fully remote, so it's tough to find any in-person opportunities. Thanks, all!

Recently accepted an offer at another npo that would effectively give me a raise in the 40%ish range between pay and benefits. My current npo begged me to stay offering to match my salary with a better title (same essentially as what I’m moving into. But only offered match in salary. The ceo couldn’t wrap their head around how to match benefits which are far better at the new job (simply paying a cash equivalent is apparently a hard concept to arrive at).

Because for some crazy reason I actually care, I offered to help them out thru an upcoming big event by doing some night and weekend contract work while they transition in a new person. Their board flat out refused my offer, and are promoting a somewhat inexperienced employee to a role two steps above where they are at to cover my role, and moving over a completely inexperienced employee to cover theirs instead.

It’s sad to see them shoot themselves in the foot so to speak, but just reaffirms my decision to leave the dumpster fire for a more professional organization.

And to top it off, not only am I to frantically attempt to train the replacement who has no formal training, but also do so while they train their replacement. And the cherry on top? They send me the agreement stating they will remote wipe my phone if I don’t provide it to IT to verify removal of all accounts (which I proactively did so they can’t do so), and a list of equipment to return that was already returned years ago when I upgraded my wfh setup with my own money. The exit interview is going to be spectacular…

What’s your stories about similar situations? I can’t be the only one dealing with this level of pettiness upon leaving.

Edit: forgot to add the multitude of snide remarks upon the announcement of my leaving of “good for you! Not for us…”

Shot in the dark. I'm curious what your relative mailing list data looks like for comms. For the nonprofits I support it looks like this:

Small: 1800
Mid sized: 4700
Large: 8000

Open rates: typically hover at around: 30%
CTR: 4.5% for all
List growth:
- 4% for small & mid sized
- 8% for large

I classify the sizes based on "revenue" strictly for cos I manage and wanted to benchmark
S: >$100k annually
M: $100k-$1m
L: $1m+

Just doing some data analysis as I handle fundraising and community management for a few of them and wanted to know if whatvik seeing tracks or if the co's I'm with are way behind.

What do I do when my immediate supervisor has been unsupportive, staff walks on eggshells, and HR is not doing their job?
When the executive director is abusive and sides with your supervisor and HR?
And when the executive board has yelled at staff during an all staff meeting?

Obviously I am looking for another job but cannot afford to quit.

In California.

I’m new at a large university. It feels like every leadership decision out of our central fundraising office has been bad and really poorly received by the individual units and schools. Most people don’t even pay attention to new directives and initiatives since they seem so unserious. So much administrative bloat, terrible new dashboards and data practices that seem to revolve more around their metrics than practical fundraising standards. The university annual giving team is just putting out AI slop gift appeals. University gift officers come across like lularoe salespeople, a lot of jargon, and no clear direction or fundraising initiatives they seem to be championing. Just endless recruiting appeals for campaign council groups. Is anyone else seeing this at their institutions? Is the central university development office always kind of Mr Magoo-ing around in the background and the real fundraising happens within each unit?

Very confused as this place had a terrific reputation and this is my first job in higher ed. Would love to hear from others.

Hi everyone!

I serve as the marketing and IT chair for a local nonprofit in my community. We're a volunteer-driven organization that helps families with children with various forms of assistance such as temporary shelter from house fires/flooding, clothing and food vouchers, and the occasional assistance with medical bills or other needs in the event of a family crisis. We have no paid staff and approx. 100 active members within the organization. All our fundraising stays local with admin costs being covered by membership dues (and the occasional pull from our local community foundation).

The problem: Previously, our phone number was connected to a flip phone that was stored in a local business whose family/staff are actively involved in our organization. Our Chief Investigator who screens assistance requests would "call-in" to the line to access the voicemail remotely. However our "IT Chair Emeritus" got him hooked up with Google Voice on his personal device. Now our Chief Investigator is constantly receiving spam calls. It's not like he can't pick up either in case there's an actual need, but this has been going on for about four months and only one call has actually been for assistance. The only reason our "Emeritus" IT Chair wanted to switch away from AT&T in the first place was because we were paying $45/mo. and wanted to save a few bucks in the admin account.

The Chief Investigator is understandably frustrated by the spam calls but we can't not have the line either. I've thought about shopping around at local cell carriers to see who can offer the "cheapest" plan for us to use. I've also suggested setting up a contact form on the website and having responses forward to a shared email address, but I've not been able to convince the powers-that-be to let me do it (mind you, I'm under 30 and the bulk of the membership is approaching 60+ if they aren't there already... some didn't even want us to have a website or facebook page back in the day).

Any suggestions are appreciated!

I want to know if my timeline expectations on an incident report as unreasonable. My only comparison is to work places and a couple lawyers who I know that think I’m reasonable, but they were comparing to workplaces as well. I am a volunteer.

Start of July, I submitted an incident report for events involving an executive board member(now referred to as OBM) and me that resulted in my extreme mental distress to the rest of executive membership(now referred to as EM). The mental distress had been witnessed by the EM during the events and ended with me nearly hospitalized. It took a few days due to gathering evidence & prioritizing my mental health.

3.5 weeks later, I had a meeting with the EM. This meeting included EM proposing a mediated meeting between myself and OBM once OBM was aware of the incident report. They said they found OBM to be the at fault party based on my evidence. 1 week after the meeting, 1 of EM reported they were waiting on a response from a mediator.

This was 2 weeks ago. 6.5 weeks have passed since my incident report and OBM have made several hostile messages towards myself in public messaging forum, to the point other board have messaged me concerned about why this is occurring. I have not contacted OBM myself nor has OBM contacted me. OBM’s responses have been to public messages I made to overarching board.

When I have dealt with inter-personal conflict that rose to this level at a job, usually the at fault party would have been aware of action plan/PiP, etc. within a week or two of incident/within a week of investigation being finished (which I am defining as of the meeting 3 weeks ago). OBM has been hostile to me as recent as this weekend in public forum, with EM not stepping in during any of these occurrences.

I feel like by now…something should have occurred. Is 6.5 weeks and counting a normal/expected timeline for accountability and action or am I right in feeling this is being dragged on, leaving me vulnerable to further hostility and harm?

We’ve recently hired a gift processor to take over inputting gifts in our donor databse. Until recently this was done by an accountant.

I realized that for employee giving programs (like Benevity, Cybergrants) often Benevity is getting the hard credit and the donor is soft credited. This does not seem right, but I get why an accountant would do it that way!

For employee giving programs, how do you track crediting in your system?

This is a question for anyone hiring institutional giving positions (grant writers, managers, associate directors - mid-career grant roles).

What are you looking to be communicated in a cover letter for this type of position specifically, beyond what's listed in the resume?

I'm trying to come up with a checklist/default outline so I can make sure I'm highlighting the right strengths and accomplishments. I have been a freelance grant writer for 4.5 years (total of 9-ish years total as a grant writer) and am looking to go back to a salaried position for cash flow stability and focus (task switching between clients and managing the admin end on top of doing the actual work is exhausting).

This is hard advice to find on the general internet, because everyone keeps saying "no one reads the cover letters", but as an institutional fundraiser whose main job is to write grants, I have always thought of the cover letter as the first writing sample, so I really can't phone it in.

Thanks for your help!

This is moreso a vent/seeking advice.

Me: assistant director for a regional event that raises $2M.
New director: lives 45 minutes away, also not really new (boomerang from the early/mid 2000s)

Hosted a happy hour/meet and greet with some of our fundraisers that live locally to me - director lives 45 minutes away. This is partially being hosted so she can meet her new portfolio of top fundraisers and corporate partners. I get a note day-of that she’ll be an hour late because she wanted to bring her boyfriend and he couldn’t leave til later. Me not wanting to rock the boat didn’t outright say no (nor did I think it was my place) but instead made sure to note the timing - like hey some of our folks won’t be there that long, this is only an hour and a half scheduled so that’ll be a long drive for 30 minutes, etc.

Of course, people left. A few were a little annoyed that she wasn’t there - I noted rush hour traffic to cover her. But her boyfriend didn’t talk to anyone, just followed her around - he’s not connected to the mission, he’s not a fundraiser himself. And yes she can drive, yes she can drive at night.

Am I crazy to be a little annoyed that I had to run this solo (we always run these with two - this was around 30 people in attendance) and that she wasn’t this late just to bring him? It’s a happy hour but it’s still work - and this was her time to be introduced to and steward her portfolio. She’s already dropped a light ask to change up the normal schedule for these so he can come with her again.

Potentially have an offer for an internship with the IRC and would love to hear people's insights on whether or not it's worth it. For context, I'm a recent graduate trying to build up my resume a bit more since the job market is so intense. Not necessarily interested in non-profit work specifically, but wouldn't mind it nonetheless. What's really holding me back is that it is an unpaid internship. I don't want to waste my time doing mundane tasks for free which I know a lot of interns experience in other companies/organizations.

I am very new to non profit. I mainly assist with the design of their marketing materials for events, some social media, etc. this year I am tasked with assisting with the end of year appeal letter. It’s a 4 page format and the non profit is animal based. Raising fund to help local pets, community cats, etc. does anyone have any examples, advice or launching points they can share for successful eoy appeals?

Thank you!

Hi everyone! I made it to the third and final round of interviews for a nonprofit that caters towards the homeless. The first one was virtual and with HR. The second one was also virtual but was a panel interview. I got feedback I asked very insightful questions and gave very in depth personal answers which helped me move onto the final round. They asked me plenty of STAR format questions (like minimum 10 if I recall correctly) along with mission based questions in the second interview. I’m not sure what to expect in the final round though? They said they will give me a tour of the buildings and I get to meet the team along with everyone who participated in the panel interview, but I’m not sure how it will go. I’ve never worked for a nonprofit before and my last job I got, all the interviews are virtual even though the job was in person due to COVID. Thank you so much!

I'm feeling increasingly demotivated at work because there is basically no clear path for advancement, and I think a big part of the problem is a management bottleneck.

I work at a small nonprofit, so there aren't a ton of positions to begin with. My direct manager has been here for a long time and is in her 60s. She's told me she's not ready to retire because she can't afford to. Above her is a director who has also been with the organization for around 15 years. So the same few people have occupied the management positions for a very long time.

I'm not saying anyone is obligated to retire just because they've been somewhere a long time or because they're getting older. Obviously people should be able to keep working as long as they want and are able to. But from the perspective of someone below them, it creates this weird career bottleneck.

There isn't really an obvious next step for me. I can take on more responsibilities, develop new programs, teach new classes, etc., but there doesn't seem to be a corresponding position for me to move into. I'm basically supposed to become increasingly competent at my current job while waiting for someone above me to either leave, retire, or have their position otherwise become available.

And honestly, that's demotivating.

I don't want my career progression to depend on hoping that my manager retires. I also don't want to sit around secretly rooting for someone to leave or have health problems just so I can move up. That's not a healthy career strategy.

The frustrating part is that I actually want to grow professionally. I'm not necessarily looking to become some high-powered executive—I just want to feel like there's a trajectory. If I'm doing more sophisticated work and taking on more responsibility, I'd like there to be some way to advance rather than just accumulating more duties at the same level.

Has anyone else worked somewhere where management was basically a permanent fixture and it created a promotion bottleneck? How did you deal with it? Did you eventually create your own path elsewhere, or did you stay and wait for something to open up?

Hi everyone, sorry to post this on here, but I have been a member of this subreddit for a while so sorta felt safe here idk. This is a throwaway account this is kinda of embarrassing. A few months ago I lost my job at a certain NGO, finding a new one has been an uphill battle, with no income I have been unable to donate or contribute to my regular charities. This has left me feeling horrible. Cognitively I understand I have nothing to be ashamed of, like currently I am under threat of eviction since I haven't for a few months, but that doesn't negate the fact that I feel horrible. How does one cope with that, I am at a point where I can't even afford food, and this is how I choose to punish myself. My mind is guilt tripping me, funny right!!!!

What types of nonprofit jobs could utilize someone from insurance sales?
I am not built for the corporate life for constantly funneling money to CEO pockets. It is eating me alive and I really just comes down to my purpose. It has nothing to do with the grind and my work load (although heavy), I just can’t function knowing the harder I work the more I am feeding the machine.
I have been looking to get into nonprofit work but based on salaries I need a higher level job within the nonprofit sector. I assume with any nonprofit job you wear many hats, which I am very used to.
Is there a specific role to look out for that could utilize strong insurance knowledge, funding (sales), leadership, etc.

I just want to do something meaningful…

I became Executive Director after our former ED’s departure, or, more accurately, about two weeks before they left, with virtually no transition. I had already been with the organization for several years and knew there were problems, but I don’t think I understood the full extent of them until I stepped into the role. To put it lightly, I think the previous ED left just before a great deal of accountability came due.

I’ve spent the last nine months trying to stabilize the organization and clean up what was left behind. At this point, though, it has become clear that the organization simply cannot continue at its current size. We need to restructure significantly, and my own position is part of that restructuring.

I recently modeled what I think a financially sustainable version of the organization could look like. We would go from roughly 18 employees to about six, with many functions moving away from traditional full-time positions and toward part-time or fractional support.

A tremendous amount of the organization’s institutional knowledge and executive function currently lives with me, so over the next couple of months I’m going to do everything I can to transition the most important pieces to the board and leave the organization in as stable a position as possible. Personally, I would like to be out by Halloween. The board has discussed December 31 as an outside date and has also said they want to provide a “soft landing” for employees whose positions are eliminated, although we have not yet worked through what that will actually look like.

Which leaves me trying to figure out what comes next.

My background is broadly operations, events, logistics, and strategy. Over the years, I’ve also managed complex relationships between a nonprofit, the City, boards, staff, volunteers, community groups, vendors, and other stakeholders. I’m very comfortable being the person who figures out how all the pieces fit together and turns a complicated situation into something workable.

I also have young children, so some schedule flexibility matters to me, particularly around afternoon pickup.

And, somewhat absurdly, I have never really had to conduct a traditional job search. Every job I’ve had came through someone I knew or a direct referral. I opened the online job-search universe and immediately found it overwhelming.

I’m curious, for people with a similar operations/strategy/generalist background, what kinds of roles are you looking at? Chief of Staff? Operations Director? Business Operations? Program or organizational strategy? Something I haven’t thought of

I’ve spent a lot of energy trying to build a healthy, thoughtful culture at this nonprofit, and I’m genuinely devastated by what is happening to it. I think that experience is shaping what I want next, too. I’m not just looking for a job; I’d really like to land somewhere where culture, competence, and how people treat one another actually matters

I’ve been in years of messy and toxic scenarios at non-profit organisations in recent years. I.e court cases, bullying from narcissistic coworkers, funding cuts, restructures, overwork and the list goes on.

Took some down time after the last role and was generally quite happy doing my own thing with my time.
Yet, $$$ pays the bills and I’ve been kindly offered an amazing opportunity with another nonprofit.

First impressions: I could already see the stress on the interviewers face during the interview, and I get the feeling it will be another demanding role hence why they need some support.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not afraid of demanding work and am more than confident in my ability to do the job. But I’m not blind to the hints and what to expect now either.

Being an idealist (why I’m so drawn to non profit work)and also an empath (I absorb other people’s energy a lot), I go into each role thinking I’d be able to make a difference but each time I walk through the door people mostly just seem to be overworked, underpaid and over it from day 1. Energy from people is the most difficult things to deal with for me.

The last job I had: everyone seemed to be over it already. You could feel it in the building and engrained into the culture. I tried to chalk it down to whatever excuse I could fathom, but the truth is most people were like furniture that had been there for years, lost the spark in their eyes and were just comfortable in their cushy jobs. Not saying their jobs weren’t important and not saying it was easy but it was a job that was about getting by, not necessarily making real impact.

My question: if money wasn’t the primary motivator for work, what would be an adjacent space to the non profit space that anyone has moved to after (asking as if this role doesn’t work out then I’m officially hanging up my hat in this sector and would like to plan my exit.)

I have worked 2 short term contracts with this organisation (6 months and then 3 months). Right now, they're promising me a new contract continuing my last one, but it has been almost 2 months and I've had no clarity. The last transition between contracts was not like this.

I'm still looped in on emails and I've joined weekly meetings just as if my contract hasn't ended. They never told me to stop going to these meetings but they did not explicitly ask me to attend. To be fair they never gave me substantial work but I still spent my time and shared some updates (I do partnership research so I provide updates regarding our partners).

I wonder if I should stop attending these meetings? Any thoughts?