Did you ever have a boss who took credit for your work?
For instance, you spend days and nights producing a grant that will make your nonprofit thousands, and possibly hundreds of thousands. You submit the grant, get the grant, and you publicly hear your boss taking credit for your work, saying that it was through his connections that you got the grant.
Or you put in months on an event that draws tons of people, makes tons of money, keeps costs low, and it comes off as a complete success. And your boss stands at the podium and takes all the credit, and after never says thank you to you.
An Executive Director or CEO who cheats employees of the chance to shine can be insecure and hostile. They’re often incompetent and unwilling to understand fundraising, and will resort to taking all of the credit for your work to hide this.
Thieving bosses will never take responsibility for their bad behavior— they will blame the Development Director, the Development Officer, the committee, the board, or anyone they can find when the fundraising goals are not met. If the dinner goes well, if the festival attracts thousands, or the nonprofit gets more grants than ever before, they will take all the credit and refuse to acknowledge anyone else.
How to Deal:
You can talk to your board chair, you can talk with committee members, or community members, but until you stand up to the boss yourself, probably nothing much will happen. Still, if you’re ready to face the possibility of being discharged, confronting your boss is still a good way to stand up for yourself.
One tactic that works is to keep track of everything that you do, submit a board report each month for the board meeting with details on everything you’ve done, and make sure you connect with each board member afterwards to make sure they read it, and to ask them if they could help you in a small fundraising task. This way, if your boss starts trying to badmouth you or blame you, you have several people who can back you up.