Do you ever think, “I could do so much more if I only had one person dedicated to…”
Ask yourself these questions:
Where are you strong in your fundraising program, and where would you like to grow?
Is your fundraising team primarily outreach in the community with fundraising thrown in as an afterthought?
Or do you focus more on events and appeals?
Or are you mainly concerned with major gifts right now?
If you want to know how to pare down your fundraising team, or how to ramp it up, here’s a good sample skeleton crew:
0. Marketing/Social Media Coordinator (to get your nonprofit featured in blogs, and secondarily, in traditional media)
Their skillset should be in writing and website programming and graphic design. They should have an English or Communications degree, and know CSS and HTML, or be willing to learn. PHP and Javascript would be a bonus. The main goal for their position should be once or twice a month, get your nonprofit featured in news blogs, such as the Huffington Post, and the major newspaper. They need to have a specific message each month, and have 2-3 good stories illustrating this, which they can send out as a press release to news outlets and e-newsletter to your donors. The secondary goal is to analyse your website, and try to find something to improve in it each month, either through making it more like kiva.org, or mercycorps.org, or some other, successful nonprofit, and using social media to start conversations with people in FB, LI and Twitter. They should also create the newsletter, and appeals. Metrics will be increasing online donations, number of articles/features per month, and increasing numbers of people in social media groups/followers.
1. Development Assistant (to enter donations, research grants, help out where needed)
The main skillset for this position should be detail-oriented data entry, research, and persuasive public speaking.
The main goal for this position should be to enter all of the relevant information, and get the thank you letters out the door within 24 hours. The secondary goal should be to fill in for the events coordinator, representing your nonprofit at community events, wherever possible. (Farmer’s markets, festivals, church gatherings, etc.) and always encouraging people to give, and having envelopes right there ready for them to donate. They can help the marketing/social media coordinator where needed too.
2. Events Coordinator/Outreach Coordinator (to represent and table at other organization’s events as well as create your own events)
The main skillset for this position should be detail-oriented data entry, proactive phone calls, persuasive speaking, and research.
The main goal of this position should be to get as much money as possible from each event through sponsorships and individual donations.
The person can research important events to be involved with, as well as what has worked for other nonprofits, and what your nonprofit could try. Giveaways, such as pens, can be useful for keeping your nonprofit on their radar. This person needs to be able to tell any person walking up to them how your nonprofit can help them, and why they should care, within 30 seconds.
The metrics for this position should be money from each event, and money from collaborative events, as well as how many people they talked with, and how many people gave their contact information.
3. Grants Manager/Estate planner (to research, write and track government and foundation grants, as well as work on planned giving appeals)
The grants manager’s main skillset should be research, detail-oriented data entry, and project management.
The main goal of their position should be to get as much grant money as possible, you set the goal, and it may also be possible to get government money for the services you provide, either through government contracts or on a more local level. See if you can get written into the city budget.
For estate planning, the person should create brochures around estate planning, and put ad versions of the brochures into relevant newspapers and magazines, and meet with people to talk about estate planning. They should be coached on the right language to use, and how to tactfully raise the issue.
Metrics should be grants money raised, perhaps 500,000 to 1 million per year, depending on your grants history, and estate money raised per year, and you set those performance goals. In this position, it will be a little harder to get immediate results, you’ll see results for grants 6 months to 2 years later, and for estate planning, it may be 10 years down the road, but they will be significant.
4. Development Director (to oversee the whole process, and to be in charge of major gifts)
The main skillset for this position should be tracking projects and donors, emotional intelligence and managing people, and persuasive writing and speaking.
The main goal of this position should be to act personable and calmly no matter what the disaster, to help the whole team get excited about fundraising, to help them understand that every no leads to a yes, because fundraising is a volume business, and work to make the director and board members aware of major givers in the community that they may have a connection to, rehearse and facilitate the connections, the visits to your facility, and the ask. This person should also monitor new fundraising fields, such as text message fundraising, hybrid nonprofits, etc.
Metrics should be how many people are in your major gifts portfolio, how many visits were successful, major gifts money raised, and amount of money raised by your team.
Each of the top positions can be broken into two positions.
If you are a Board member, Executive Director or Development Director, ask yourself, is it time to re-write some job descriptions? Is it time to offer some professional development opportunities, such as an estate planning course or a web design/user interface design course?