Your Development Director Should Be in More Rooms

Dear executive directors and CEOs,

There is a strange moment that happens inside a lot of nonprofits.

Programs spends months developing a new initiative. Leadership agrees it is an organizational priority. Finance works through the budget. Communications starts thinking about how to talk about it. Maybe partnerships are already forming or a launch date has been discussed.

Then somebody turns to Development. “Okay, how are we going to fund this?”

And your fundraiser, who has just been handed a fully formed program, a budget, a timeline, and probably a revenue expectation, is supposed to figure it out.

We do this with programs. We do it with events. We do it with strategic priorities, partnerships, expansion plans, communications campaigns, capital needs, and sometimes entire organizational budgets. Development gets invited into the conversation once there is something that needs money.

By then, we have already missed opportunities. Your Development Director should be in more rooms.

Development Is Getting Invited Too Late

Fundraisers are often positioned downstream from organizational decision-making. Other people determine what the organization wants to do, and Development is responsible for finding the resources to make it happen.

Sometimes that sequence makes sense. Your fundraiser does not need to be involved in every operational decision your organization makes. Please do not forward this article to your Development Director and suddenly invite them to fourteen additional meetings a week. They will hate me.

But there are plenty of conversations where Development's absence has consequences.

Imagine that Programs is developing a new initiative. During those early conversations, the team is discussing who will participate, what community need the program addresses, what outcomes they hope to achieve, how it might grow, and what success could look like.

That is fundraising information.

Your fundraiser may hear something that immediately connects to a foundation's priorities. They may recognize an opportunity for a corporate partnership. They may know a donor who has been asking about exactly this issue. They may realize that a particular component could be especially compelling to individual donors, or that the proposed timeline is going to make institutional funding difficult.

If Development learns about all of this after the program has been designed, some of those possibilities may still exist. Others may have already disappeared.

Fundraising strategy gets much stronger when the fundraiser understands organizational strategy while it is actually being developed.

Your Fundraiser Is Listening for Different Things

One of the reasons I want Development in more rooms is simple: fundraisers hear organizations differently.

Someone in a meeting casually mentions that a volunteer works for a company with a large community giving program. Development hears a potential corporate relationship.

A program staff member shares an incredible story about a participant. Development hears a stewardship story that could help donors understand their impact.

Leadership talks about expanding into another community. Development starts thinking about funding geography, local partners, prospective donors, foundations, and the revenue required to support that growth.

Someone mentions that a longtime supporter has been showing up to more events lately. Development wonders when someone last sat down with them.

A board member says, “Oh, I know someone over there.” Development's ears perk up.

None of these things necessarily appeared on the meeting agenda. That is exactly why access matters.

So much useful fundraising information lives inside ordinary organizational conversations. It moves through staff meetings, program planning, community partnerships, board discussions, communications calendars, event planning, and leadership conversations. If Development only receives information through formal requests for funding support, they are getting a filtered version of the organization.

They need proximity to the work.

Development Has Something to Teach the Room, Too

There is another reason I want fundraisers upstream: the rest of the organization benefits from understanding what Development knows.

Your fundraiser is talking to donors. They are watching giving patterns. They know which relationships are getting warmer and which have gone quiet. They hear questions from funders. They see what sponsors respond to. They know which stories are resonating, which grant opportunities are emerging, where revenue is overly concentrated, and how long it can actually take to move someone from interested supporter to significant investor.

That perspective belongs in organizational planning.

If leadership is discussing a major expansion, Development can help everyone understand the fundraising runway required to support it.

If Communications is building the editorial calendar, Development can identify opportunities for donor stewardship, cultivation, and storytelling.

If Programs is designing something new, Development can share what they are hearing from institutional and individual funders without allowing funding trends to dictate the mission.

If an event is being planned, Development can start thinking months earlier about sponsorships, donor cultivation, prospect engagement, stewardship, and what happens after everyone goes home.

And if somebody mentions a promising new partnership, your fundraiser can ask questions about the philanthropic possibilities before the relationship gets boxed into whatever form was originally imagined.

Those contributions make the entire organization more fundraising-aware. That is part of what a Culture of Philanthropy actually looks like.

I’m Watching This Happen With One of My Clients

I've been thinking about this a lot because of a Development Manager I work with at one of my client organizations.

We are doing plenty of what you would expect from a fundraising engagement: strengthening strategy, looking at revenue opportunities, thinking about donor relationships, building systems, and creating a more sustainable approach to fundraising.

But one of the opportunities we've identified for her has very little to do with learning another fundraising tactic.

She needs to be in more conversations.

There are things happening across the organization that will make her a better fundraiser simply because she gets to hear them.

She needs to hear how programs are evolving. She needs exposure to what community members are saying. She should know which partnerships are developing, where leadership sees growth, what Communications is planning, and what challenges staff are encountering before those things arrive in Development as a request for money.

And every time she enters one of those conversations, something else happens.

Everyone in the room gets access to her expertise.

She can start helping colleagues recognize philanthropic opportunities themselves. She can explain why a donor relationship may need six months of cultivation before an ask. She can hear an idea and connect it to a funding opportunity nobody else knew existed. She can help people think about stewardship before the gift arrives. She can ask the fundraising question while there is still time for the answer to shape the plan.

That exchange is important.

A Culture of Philanthropy requires information to move throughout the organization. Development needs access to what the organization knows, and everyone else benefits from understanding what Development knows.

This Is How Fundraising Becomes Organizational

We talk constantly about wanting staff and boards to understand that fundraising is a shared responsibility. Then we sometimes operate Development like an island.

We give the fundraiser their goals. We send them program descriptions. We forward budgets. We ask them for grant updates at staff meetings. We invite them to present revenue numbers at board meetings.

And then we wonder why everyone else still thinks fundraising belongs to Development. Shared responsibility requires shared context.

Programs does not need to become Development. Finance does not need to become Development. Communications does not need to become Development. Your Executive Director should not wake up tomorrow and start rewriting appeal letters because they read a blog about Culture of Philanthropy.

People should understand how their work intersects with philanthropy. That becomes much easier when the fundraiser is present early enough to build those connections.

Over time, something interesting starts happening. Program staff begin recognizing stories Development should hear. Communications starts considering donor audiences while planning content. Board members recognize introductions they can make. Leadership thinks about fundraising feasibility while discussing growth. Staff start surfacing corporate and foundation connections without waiting to be asked.

Development gains a much wider field of vision, and the organization develops stronger fundraising instincts. That is the kind of organizational behavior that sustainable fundraising depends on.

Vanessa and I Are Taking This Conversation to CenterLink

Vanessa Serratos at Pacific Center for Human Growth and I are excited to talk about this work together next month.

Vanessa and I are co-presenting “Moving Beyond Survival Mode: Building Sustainable Fundraising for LGBTQ+ Organizations” at the CenterLink Leadership Summit in Sacramento.

And I love that we're presenting it together.

I'm coming into the conversation as a fundraising strategist and consultant working across organizations. Vanessa is living this work from inside an LGBTQ+ community organization, where sustainable fundraising has to coexist with programs, community needs, limited capacity, leadership priorities, events, partnerships, and the thousand other things happening inside a nonprofit every day.

Those perspectives belong together because fundraising cannot be separated from the organization doing it.

If we want LGBTQ+ organizations to move beyond survival mode, we have to look at more than the next campaign, grant, gala, or major gift. We have to examine how information moves, how decisions get made, who participates in those decisions, and whether our fundraisers have enough access to understand where the organization is going.

That's part of the conversation Vanessa and I are bringing to Sacramento.

Take a look at the rooms where decisions are being made in your organization.

Program planning. Budgeting. Communications. Partnerships. Events. Leadership. Strategic planning. Community engagement.

Your Development Director probably does not need to be in all of them. But they probably need to be in more of them.

Before your next meeting, ask two questions: What could Development learn by being in this room? What could everyone else learn if Development were here?

If you've got a good answer to either one, pull up another chair.

Sincerely,

Queers

Queer For Hire provides fundraising support to Queer nonprofits, LGBTQIA+ cultural competency to straight-led organizations and corporations, and individual coaching for Queer professionals.

Learn about our Fundraising Services <here> – we’ll lead or support your fundraising efforts, whether you need general support or want to focus on raising money from and for the LGBTQIA+ community.

Learn about our Fundraising Trainings <here> – we can coach your board, staff, and fundraising team on how to fundraise and how to engage LGBTQIA+ donors.

Learn about our other services <here> or our resources <here>.