I’ve been working for a small nonprofit for about 3.5 years now. This is my first job in the nonprofit sector. I have taken initiative on some projects, and do my overall multi-faceted development job well. I find that it takes a long time to create change and start new endeavors. This may be a common predicament for nonprofits. I want to start new projects and feel like I need to learn and embody leadership skills to implement new ventures.

Any advice or specific book recommendations would be appreciated!

I work at a medium sized nonprofit and currently, the director of development checks the bank every day to see which donations came in, they bring in and open the mail, then process the donations into RE. We have a couple finance people in our organization and it feels weird to me that the director of development is the one checking the bank and opening checks. I am new to development and am trying to implement processes in our organization and just wanted to see if my instincts are wrong. I would think that finance should track the gifts and provide a log with donor information for the development team to enter the gifts into RE, do thank you letters, etc… I would love some feedback on best practices. Thanks!

Hi all.

I currently work a part-time low paid contractor position with a non profit (unfortunately contractor gigs seems to be the norm for entry level non profit jobs now). However, I care a lot about the mission. I don’t want to say what the focus area is specifically for privacy reasons.

I’ve recently been offered a full time job with benefits etc and a good salary. Of course I will be accepting this new position. However the cause area is different from the one I work on now, and while still meaningful work, doesn’t speak to me as much.

One day, in an ideal world, I’d like both a well paid non profit job and one that aligns with a mission I would like to focus on.

I am looking for experiences of people moving from non profit jobs in one area of focus to another one. For example from work that tries to alleviate homelessness to environmental concerns. do you think it can be done? Is it unusual for people to switch lanes in this way?

I suppose I am worried the new job is quite niche and will lock me into this kind of area forever. Again, apologies for the ambiguity.

My job search has been so hard, and I feel as though you have to be the perfect candidate in every way, with all your experience aligning with a new position’s mission. Am I right about this? Or has my perspective been skewed by the difficulty of getting my foot in the door?

Edit: my area of specialism is program coordination

Hi everyone!

I'm the Treasurer for my son's marching band booster club. We have a donor who would like to give us a very generous donation via a stock transfer. This will be the only time we receive a stock donation. I have looked into stock donation platforms since we don't have a brokerage account. I came across Stock Donator. Has anyone used it before? Is there anything else I can look into to receive this one stock donation? Thanks!

I’m an IT career person, currently leading a development team in a large multimedia company— not a techie myself per se. But have over 25 years of experience doing various roles. Can get into details if there is interest but really trying to get high level assessment if non-profit world can be a good fit for me.
Have people down this before? What could path look like? Anyone who would like to connect?

I am at an org that is running a craft fair for our guests and we are also selling stuff created by volunteers to raise money for the org. We have a long time volunteer who's wonderful who donated an item, and she has a friend who offered to buy it for a thousand dollars. We have an Etsy shop, but I see that Etsy takes 10%, and I'm also not sure that my org wants to show this sale as publicly listed because we turned down some other super fancy stuff to sell because it was at that same price range and we don't usually have anyone buying in that price range. Is there a way I can set up a private link for this donor's friend on some service so she can buy the item that won't cost us $100, as Etsy does?

Hello, this is my first post on Reddit, but I could really do with some advice. I’m interviewing for Supporter Engagement Officer at a largish museum in the UK. I have been Development Assistant for three years, working mainly in event planing and individual giving in the culture sector. I draft and plan a lot of stuff for Patrons and smaller donors, but I have three managers above me, so I have had less chance to actually come up with and ‘do’ things, and at supporter events I’m usually stuck at the door. While I was previously successful in getting interviews for officer roles, I am always told there was someone more experienced than me.
Any tips on how to ace this interview? And advice how to handle a question on something I have no experience of?

thank you!

Has anyone here utilized Forever Funding for their org? I'm curious to know if anyone has been successful with the program.

I just accepted an offer for an accounting leadership role at a nonprofit community college, and I’ll be transitioning from corporate accounting into higher education.
For anyone who currently works or has previously worked in accounting/finance at a community college, I’d love to hear about your experience.
I’m especially interested in work-life balance. How are the hours during a typical week? Are there particularly busy periods during month-end, year-end, budgeting, or audit season? How does the workload compare with corporate accounting?
I’d also appreciate any insight into the culture, benefits, job stability, and overall pros and cons of working in higher education accounting.

I'm on the hunt for a new job, and just read a job description that seems intriguing but one line bothered me. This was listed as a nice to have, but not a requirement: "You've raised money for other local nonprofits and can bring relationships with you." If you're raising money for an organization, you're selling the mission, not yourself. I've worked in a couple of small nonprofits in years past who had an expectation that an MGO they hired would bring a cadre of donors to the new organization despite those donors having no affiliation or affinity. It never ended well.

The other parts of the job description looked great and it's an interesting position building a development office. It could be that they're not aware that bringing a gaggle of donors to a new organization is not a reasonable expectation of a development director. What do you think? Enough of a red flag to pass on applying? Or an education point that a development director can bring about how fundraising works that would be accepted as truth.

Hello... Wondering if there are any other nonprofit founders or directors here that can offer advice or even validation. I'm painfully realizing that a nonprofit structure may not be the best way to make an impact and also I feel like a failure for not being able to raise enough funds to even keep myself hired. All the administrative burden has taken the joy out of why I decided to start in the first place. Anyways.... I'm open to hearing similar stories, too.

I run a design studio helping nonprofits with websites. We recently offered a pro bono web grant to a grassroots nonprofit, but the project became very painful. Instead of having a single decisive lead, every board member weighed in with conflicting edits, and the point person simply passed raw, contradictory feedback back to us (down to debating specific color shades). We don't run into this with our paid nonprofit clients who have established staff, but we want to keep helping smaller, under-resourced groups without burning myself and our team out. What vetting questions or agreement clauses should we include in future grant cycles to ensure the org has a clear, empowered decision-maker?

Context: I am working at a small nonprofit. Our programming staff (2 people) were hired three years ago and have been tasked with rebuilding our programming after COVID caused a steep decline in our work. The mission hasn’t changed, but where we are doing the work (geographic focus) and some of the approaches we are taking have.

For example, I was told this February that our programming staff wanted to expand our work into a new region. They wanted to start advertising in that region in March, hire some fellows in May, and have them hired by June. However, they act like they can’t advertise or gain momentum in a region if I don’t have funding for it. And one month’s heads up just doesn’t give me enough time when expansion is largely dependent on grant funds (we are rebuilding our grassroots base).

If that’s how they feel, I said I’d like more than a month’s notice about what their goals are for the region. Or I’ve suggested they start building groundwork there anyway (funded by some general operating support) so that 1) I can strengthen applications by citing the foundation they are building and 2) we can maintain momentum as I’m seeking funding.

I’m unclear how else to maneuver things— if I need to raise money before they’ll develop a plan, I feel ill-equipped. If they won’t develop a plan until I have secured funding, development gets blamed for programming slowing.

WHAT DO I DO?

This is my first time as a development director, and no one else does fundraising at my org. Am I expecting too much?!

Hi, I've been trying to understand how to integration works between the 2 platforms in terms of - channel-based donation information that funraisin captures (via UTM tracked links) and how that information can be mapped to a specific appeal and packages in RE?

Standard integration between 2 platforms does not include sharing UTM data. So while I can pull UTM data from funraisin via their reports, I don't understand how can I ensure the same data is recorded accurately in RE for reporting and analysis purposes.

PS. We don't want to pay for custom integration between the 2 platforms. That defeats the purpose of integration in the first place and UTM tracked data is a pretty basic form of data transfer.

I have an idea for a project and I am looking into Fiscal Sponsorship. I am a bit overwhelmed by the number of organizations that offer it and specifically the range in fees that they charge. Some are strictly a percentage while others have fixed fees, including one time onboarding fees or annual or even monthly 'membership' fees. What are things I should be looking at to determine which organizations I should consider versus the ones I should not?

I have recently been made aware of a situation on a board (of which I'm currently serving as president) of an officer bullying/borderline threatening reputational harm to a general board member. The aggrieved individual shared with me the messages (in writing) and they are downright vindictive, accusatory, and intimidating/threatening. The victim has described the situation that kicked this off - a matter of personal finances which the bully *lacks knowledge of* but is still alleging is fraudulent. The victim has offered receipts proving everything is above board (pardon the pun). It's a personal situation and not one that would otherwise come before the board, but due to the fact that it is occurring between board members, I feel it needs to be addressed as a bullying incident.

Our by-laws are pretty basic and boilerplate, and are overdue for a revision, but as is usually the case, because this has never come up, there is no anti-bullying language in the current by-laws. That will definitely be changing!

Any advice as to how to deal with this without recourse to by-laws? I personally have a zero tolerance policy with bullying and want the matter to dealt with quickly and clearly. My hunch is that the first step should be having a video call between myself, the bully, the board's legal counsel, and possibly one other board member to act as witness. I *want* to require the bully to apologize to the other member for language used or call for a resignation (and, frankly, I'd really rather have both because I do *not* want someone like that on the board under my tenure as president). Is there any reason to think that might not fly?

Thanks in advance.

Looking for some real-world perspective from other nonprofit finance/accounting folks on this.

I keep running into the same situation: a donor sends a gift, calls it a "grant" in the check memo or the cover letter, but when I actually read what they've sent, there's no restriction on how the funds can be used, and the donor never asks for a report, an accounting, or any follow-up on how the money was spent. No conditions, no periodic reporting requirement, nothing.

Even so, my habit has been to set these up in QBO exactly like a restricted grant with reporting obligations: create a class/project for it, code every expense against it, and track it down to the dollar until the funds are exhausted. That way I can generate a report showing exactly what was spent against that "grant" if anyone ever asks.

Lately I've been questioning that habit. If there's no donor restriction and no reporting requirement, what's the actual justification — accounting or otherwise — for tracking every expenditure against it the way I would a genuinely restricted grant?

Can people share what it is like being on a governance board working with a short tenure or long tenure executive director?

I was wondering how the experience differs. I have connected with some boards where the ED has served 2-5 years and others where the ED has been with the not for profit 18-20 years.

i am in my 30s and did a master's in natural resources management and development in germany, but messed the whole thing up by not getting enough work experience during the master's because I was sort of clueless about what I had to do to be competitive for jobs after. i did two internships but they didn't lead to a job offer.

during my studies, i made a huge mistake of asking a UN internship if I could do the internship part time in the interview, because it was unpaid and i didn't realize that these UN internships had to be full time. when they rejected me they said they would have taken me had I been more available. then i tried to look for a job for a year, and by the time i realized that the job thing wasn't happening, it was too late to apply for the internship again because i was outside the one year window for graduating.

now I am in a really bad situation, i am unemployed with no job prospects. and i am considering doing a second master's in germany (the tuition is free and I have 2.5k euros coming in each month from an inheritance that recently started two months ago), with the sole purpose of applying to as many internships and student jobs as possible in hopes of getting something.

a lot of people told me this is a bad idea, i will be too old, it will look weird to have two masters degrees and no real work experience in the new field, but i am desperate, my only real option at this point is to work at starbucks because i tried for a year to get a job in germany and it didn't work, and there are almost no jobs in what i studied in the united states with insane competition, and i have a weak CV for not doing more than two internships.

so i was wondering what you thought about this. obviously it would be better to get a job, but i'm stuck because i don't qualify for internships anymore to get more experience, and i also don't seem to have enough experience to get hired at an actual entry level job.

many thanks for your advice, i am so depressed and just don't know what to do.

Im an American currently living and working abroad in Latin America. I’ve been here about 5 years now, starting with the Peace Corps. I then got hired on to a locally based NGO that focuses mostly on micro finance and education programs. Its the largest in country and relatively well known internationally. It’s a social enterprise, so it isn’t a charity, but it’s nonprofit. We manage a budget of about $25 million across all programs, so it’s relatively large in this context and in the US.

I do a little bit of everything in the organization, so it’s been a great experience to see how everything works. My position to a US/European audience is Chief of Staff to the Vice President of Programs. My role includes a lot of exactly what it sounds like: program management. Whether that be the micro finance program, our globally known poverty reduction program, the self-sustaining schools, entrepreneurial education or grant writing, amongst others. I have my fingers in a bit of everything and directly contribute to organizational strategy. I feel like I’ve learned a lot and have been given quite a lot of responsibility over the last few years and shown that I’m able to grow quickly within organizations and gain trust.

However, my wife and I are talking about moving to the States again. I would really like to remain in this line of work, public or private. I don’t want to go back to the corporate life.

I’m wondering if anyone has any advice or experiences on relating to US audiences your job experiences while working abroad? Do US organizations respect experience received abroad? I can directly see how what I’ve done can be applied in the US, but then I’m the one who’s here, not the potential hiring party. Would love to hear feedback from some folks.

I was lucky to get hired last winter for a DoD job after being 7 years away from the game. It pays well and it couldn't have come at a better time, as I am finally preparing to leave an emotionally abusive marriage with little to no savings due to school debt and other health-related costs. Needless to say... I NEED this job.

The organization is great, but there are several issues that are contributing to less-than-stellar performance on my part. Meeting load: 30% of my day is spent in meetings across four different center in the city. This place LOVES meetings. Meetings about leadership, about language, about working styles, about whether we re do our mission, ED's Council, and all day retreats. I have very little time to actually do my work. My boss is the one who is a meeting fanatic, and this is her sacred cow. I am also the first professional fundraiser they ever hired, so there were no systems set in place. Just ad-hoc "do your best" reinvention of the wheel with every fundraising cycle.

Second, is that they migrated from one database that was already messy because they never had a dedicated database person, to another database. The migration was done in-house, again, by non-database staff, so we went from bad to worse.

The Dev. Coordinator I hired was promising and soon after revealed to have serious judgement problems- she essentially went rogue by calling donors on her own, making promises we could not keep, etc. So we had to let her go.

I am now down one staff member, running the whole operation on my own, with a bad database, systems I am slowly building, two major events to organize, one campaign, and an annual fund. I don't ever have time to do all the things I'm supposed to, and last week I dropped the ball on a Board presentation. My boss met with me to let me know that the Board is unhappy with my performance, and paying close attention to everything I do. Which sucks, because I am bringing home the bacon despite all of this.

On top of this, I received an email FRIDAY letting us know that there is a new Board format for the Board presentation and our reports, in the new format, are due Tuesday.

One of the missing systems is a lack of a good Board Development Report. I created one with all the metrics I would want to see- total raised, pledges, average donation amount, LYBUNT, SYBUNT, % participation by constituencies, and analysis. They liked it at first, but 4 months into my tenure, I heard through the grapevine that now they hate it and don't understand it. Maybe I need to make it pretty and add colors. I don't know.

So here's my ask: Do you have report template you could share? What metrics does your Board like to see? what kind os slides do they respond well to?

I really want to get better at this. I HAVE to.

I need some perspective and I will try and be concise.

I joined the advisory board of a very small non profit whose work is very important to me.

They are brand new to fundraising. They received a one-time six figure gift from a not-named donor who also cares about this somewhat niche but health-related work.

The founder recently (a perfectly nice guy) frantically emailed the board and advisory board that everyone needed to donate NOW TODAY, as they were applyoing for their first grant and I had told him that 100% board participation is vital.

It was the urgency...

Then 2 weeks later, another request for donations for an initiative.

There are 2 more initiatives before the end of the year. The plan, apparently is to reach out and expect individual donations for each from every donor and board member. This is not how it works IMO and experience.

This is totally out of the realm of what I am used to. Donor fatigue, weird tax documents (4 or 5 forms for each amount...), it feels amateruish and weird.

I do not want to solicit anyone I know right now because this is out of the realm of how I have seen things done.

They are just spending down the six figures and raising fund to pay the one staffer and consultant.

I have tried to be upfront about this. But it is falling on deaf ears.

The board meetings are very unprofessional and I feel badly because it seems doomed.

What to do...

EDITED to say: thank you for the input. I don’t accept a BOD role and opted for advisory because of how odd the dynamic is.

I’m a grad student in Ontario, and I was hired this summer through the Canada Summer Jobs program as a mental health worker.

My original contract ended two weeks ago, but they extended it while waiting to hear about additional funding. During that time, both my manager and the executive director kept telling me things like, “We’re 90% sure we’ll get funding” and even “We’d love to keep you for three years.” Naturally, I got my hopes up.

Two weeks ago, my manager pulled me aside and told me they didn’t get the funding, so my contract would definitely end September 4. Obviously I was disappointed, but I started making plans around that information.

The problem is that my lease is also up September 1. Because I thought my job was ending, I turned down a housing opportunity in my city and started figuring out where I was going to live once I was no longer working. I ultimately decided I’d temporarily move in with my dad to save money while I figured things out.

Then yesterday my manager pulled me aside and basically went, “LOL JK, we got the funding after all! We’re extending you until the end of September.”
Like… cool??? I’m obviously happy to have another few weeks of income, but I had already made major life decisions based on what you told me. I literally turned down housing because I thought this job was ending September 4, and now I’m going to have to live with my dad for a couple of months while I figure out a new housing situation.

I understand that funding is outside their control, but I wish they would understand that these constant reversals have real consequences for the people whose lives depend on their employment.

Am I allowed to be upset over the emotional whiplash? Is this genuinely unfair?