Want to know what “letting a Fundraiser do their job” looks like?
Here’s a quick story. I recently caught up with a longtime friend who is a “fundraising lifer” like me. He shared a story from earlier in his career when he was brought in as a Director of Development with a specific task of growing the organization.
A couple months in, he presented a fundraising campaign to the Executive Director for approval. The campaign was different than what the organization had done in the past. And in an example of leadership and trust, the ED said,
“This makes me deeply nervous. It is approved without any changes.”
It’s hard to express how much I love and admire that response: the ED acknowledged their feelings, then let my friend do the job he was hired to do.
The nonprofit fundraising world could use more leadership like this. It’s good to acknowledge our feelings, because feelings are real and strong. And it’s good to let Fundraisers do the jobs they were hired to do and live with the consequences.
When a boss regularly doesn’t let a Fundraiser try a new tactic or a new message, that boss dooms the nonprofit to underachievement. The organization never achieves its potential because any Fundraiser with talent and ambition will leave.
Let me put it this way: for a tiny bit of risk (trying something new), the organization has the chance to discover a way to raise more money AND increase the chance that a talented employee will stay.
And the campaign my friend put together? It was a remarkable success. It was the beginning of a four-year run that tripled the revenue of the organization. That growth would not be possible without the trust and leadership shown by the ED.
In my experience, the upside of that trust and leadership is FAR greater than the downside.
