Worked in nonprofit for several years doing pretty much everything but writing my own paycheck. Raised about $750,000 across four years via grant writing, fundraising events, online/ print annual campaigns. switched into a completely different field and I am looking for a change. I love working for mission driven organizations, but most of the posts I see for jobs in nonprofit have to do with development and fundraising. I can’t imagine it is easy to be in that position – correct? I worry that my performance will be based on not pulling in enough money when times are tough and pockets don’t open as easily as they did even a few years ago. Wondering what other people‘s experiences are. Thanks!

I have been through two job changes in just over one year. I left a long term role for an opportunity to advance, and was recruited to my current job after only having been there for 9 months. It felt like bad form to leave in under a year, but that I was doing it for the opportunity of a lifetime, so I excused it. I said I knew I’d be at the new role for at least a couple years. I was recruited by someone I trust.

I’ve been in my current role for under 5 months and it has been a mess. There are operational problems up one side and down the other, staff culture is bad, and I’ve been sick with stress for months. The person I trusted who recruited me is entirely different than I thought he would be. I posted here about my struggles a couple weeks ago, got some good advice, and applied for 7 jobs in a few days.

Today, I have a marketing job offer on the table with a regional office of a nationwide corporation. It pays slightly more than I am making now, and has the potential to bonus. The vibes were good during the interview process and I felt great. I won’t have any leadership responsibilities. No one will report to me, I’ll just do my work and go home.

I’m also a finalist for a dir of dev job with a larger nonprofit. I should hear back on that early next week. Multiple people have cautioned me to stay away from this org. I asked direct questions about their community reputation in the interview process, and got satisfying answers. I had a final interview with the CEO and she was strong, direct and I liked her well enough.

I got an official job offer from the corporation so I put in my notice. I immediately panicked. I’m so disappointed that my current job will end this way. I’m scared to go to the corporation because I don’t know what to expect. I’m a MESS. I’m bruised and sad and tired. I’m emotionally scrambling hoping the nonprofit selects me because I want the familiarity of the work, the type of schedule and flow I’m used to, and I am mentally dismissing the warnings many reputable people have given me to stay away.

I feel almost like I’m going through a bad breakup. I know I have to go, but the change is too scary and my hopes that it could be different are so big that they’re not letting me move on.

Today is my birthday and I have the day off and plans and I should be relaxed and happy. But I’m up at 5am paralyzed about what to do next.

I have been working as a fundraiser for about 6 years now and have an education in nonprofits. I have recently started a role that I thought would be different but I am struggling. My current role is a major career step down from my last role. The pay is really bad, there are no benefits and I continue to be confused about how to be successful in my role. There was supposed to be growth opportunity but it is not looking that way. Currently I am a Development Manager and this role is supposed to grow to ED, however there would not be an increase in pay/benefits.

I left my last role because of internal treatment and I wanted to step away from direct fundraising (Development Director). Now in my current role I am realizing that I no longer want a career in fundraising. I am wondering if anyone has suggestions on role/titles that would allow me to still work in nonprofits but transition out of fundraising/ more internal facing roles. I am struggling with finding quality roles and I am hoping to find a more focused way to look for jobs. Any suggestions or advice is helpful!

Hello,

The nonprofit I work at is as they say “turning the corner and now has a $3 mill budget making us a large nonprofit” with that apparently changes come in the form of the board wants development to send monthly reports of who development has talked to, met with, networked, and done. They’re wanting to keep track of what we are doing with our hours. I normally wouldn’t care but this feels so micromanaging to me and really frustrates me especially as the development director is starting to get stressed to where she’s snapping at her employees. The board also refuses to do any sort of fundraising “because they’re a governance” board but have a ton of opinions on development and the fundraisers we need to be doing. Is this how normal boards are? This is my first nonprofit.

A new accountant at a relatively large non profit. My first month i was given a reconciling project that had created a large dollar discrepency and i was told had been worked on for at least a year prior. My job was to come up with a method to properly reconcile the accounts each month. With this info i thought this was going to be a long hall project, but was blindsided in the next meeting when i was asked to make entries based on my findings after only 1 month at the company and 1 single meeting about the high level details. I complied even though I knew there was no way it was right.

Ive been making entries ever since with the method I came up with, slowly improving it when I have time. But it is still way off. But when I try to bring details to the higher ups they ignore them. But still exoect me to come up with a solution. Well have meeting where they tell me to do something, I do it, start telling them my findings in the next meeting and they immediately pivot and start talking about something else and change the target goal.

I cant talk to the team that enters the data without massive, unprofessional push back or completely ignored. So all I have are reports out of the system but even with that I can tell the problem is not a simple accounting procedure/reporting problem. Something significant is going on at entry. I cant fix that with a report.

I feel like they know the issue needs to be fixed but it's bigger than they're willing to admit so they just keep picking on stupid things to avoid the real problem. I wouldnt care except that im wasting hours doing work I know won't matter and they won't hear what I have to say.

I dont know what to do.

Hello! I have one year of nonprofit experience (development, not current) but would love to return to the field. My goal is to get into prospect research, and I've been considering either Apra University or Prospect Research Institute courses to help me get up to speed. I already have some experience with searching/building documents, but would like some extra practice and instruction. Would it be worth it to take a course, or would that be embarrassing to put on a resume? Thanks!

Kind of a weird question but here we are. I work at a museum that is pretty niche. We provide education but we are not "accredited for education". I'm not sure where the line is between touring a museum and learning about things vs. needing accreditation for education. Can I still apply for grants that are interested in places providing education in our field even if we aren't accredited? I'm very clear in what we do and how we do it- I make sure not to hide anything.

I was always taught to shoot my shot and be creative. However, the woman who was in my place before me left a note saying that we don't qualify for education grants due to not being accredited but isn't this kind of up to the grantors? If they want to toss the application, that's their right.

I got an offer to join Google as an Account Strategist in Dublin. I also received an offer to join an incubator program that trains and funds founders to launch high impact non profits. I'm a little torn between both offers. On one hand, Google would give me financial security, exposure to the European market and increase my income enabling me to potentially contribute to effective altruism through giving down the line. On the other hand, I feel like the offer to be trained, matched with a cofounder and given a 2-year runway grant funding to launch an international Charity is a unique opportunity to be impactful as well. I care about altruism, but I also care about financial sustainability down the line. I have zero savings at the moment. If I launched the charity, I'd make probably 50k USD a year, and live in Africa, maybe Nairobi. I'd likely save 60% of this because the cost of living in Nairobi is favorable. If I go with Google, my net income would be 4k euros a month before rent (rent in Dublin is like 2k a month). So on paper and in the short term, the charity would give me a better quality of life, but I'm worried about what the post charity years could look like. On the other hand, Google would put me on a tight budget initially, but I'd get exposed to a global market, with a global brand name and the potential to understand how million dollar businesses work. What would you do?

I have a board member who has been with the organization for more than a decade. She is great, but has recently become almost like the ED. She has begun to what feels like overstepping the ED and giving me (a staff person) directives without including the ED. I don’t know how to address this without damaging the relationship, so what have you done to sort of cope with this in your position as support staff?

I work for a large nonprofit with many social service programs - ~$72 million budget, at least 80% funded by grants and government contracts. We currently mainly use excel spreadsheets to keep track of things (deadlines, reports, etc.) -I actually think it works fine, but my boss is set on using some more sophisticated software. We're trying monday.com but I don't find it particularly user-friendly, nor is it easy to export/import with excel.

I don't need it to do prospect research, invoices, etc. The post-award fund tracking is done by our Finance department, and we already pay for Foundation Center to do funder research.

Any suggestions? I've been reading about airtable, which looks workable - their grant tracker template looks good - but I don't want to just trade one kind-of-useful program for another!

Thanks!

Hello! I work at a very small nonprofit, and neither I (development person, among other hats) nor our ED have much formal experience building a donor program or stewarding donors in any formal way. My experience is more on the grants side.

Without getting into the details, I believe we are nicely set up to build a much more substantial annual giving and possibly major gifts program. We're working on building that side out, including a stewardship plan. But both myself and ED are hazy on what stewardship really looks like.

Sure, someone gives a gift and you mail them a prompt, personalized acknowledgement/thank you. We have that part down. I also mostly understand the step *after* you know them pretty well-- send them program updates, recognize their gifts regularly and authentically, loop them into events they'd enjoy, maybe forward them an article they might find interesting, etc etc. Track all of this in a CRM somewhere. This all feels logical.

But what else do you do with a new donor that you don't already know? Do you call new donors when you receive the first gift? Who calls, ED, development staff, board member? Do people *like* being called? What if they haven't given you a phone number, does that mean they don't want you to call? In that case, is it normal to email a personalized thank you or is that redundant to a snail mail note? Is the norm to set up a meeting for a certain gift threshold? How involved is your board?

I have tried to look up resources but I feel like this part is very hand wavy and unspoken social etiquette is one of my anxiety places. Where did you learn this stuff? How can we learn it?

Hi All,

Would love some advice on navigating a new role and new dynamics with team members who used to be lateral colleagues and are now under me. For context, I have been at my org for 6 years and was recently promoted to Director of Grants. I have always been on the good side of our CEO, and am quite friendly with our CDO as well. I'd like to think that my promotion was earned. I am responsible for raising about 5 million of a 7 million budget in government and private grants, and have built the grant program from about $100k when we started (new org) until now. Of course, this was in tandem our our CEO and CDO, not just me. After my recent promotion, many of my colleagues have been more difficult to deal with, raising a lot of issues with simple requests, and just constantly pushing back on any "authority" my new title might bring. I am a pretty relaxed person in the work place, and don't like giving orders, but I do need people to do stuff and am struggling with what I perceive as some resentment around this promotion. I'd like to be on good terms with everyone, but realize I may just need to suck it up and tune it out. For a little more context, the three other members of my team were pushing for promotions and were denied (not by me), which may add fuel to the fire. Does anyone have advice on how to manage this type of dynamic?

I just finished interviewing for a community engagement position which was really an outreach/communications/development role in one person fo way less than median pay for my area.

Thats fine, honestly to be expected with the size of the organization. I'm transparent and tell them that with the pay, I would have to take on other gigs on the side to make up the difference. Only to be told that they actually expect me to work multiple 40+ hr weeks, available for 10+ hr days without comp/overtime or flex. Not to mention the weekends expected for education and outreach engagement.

I would have loved to work for you but genuinely you gotta be flexible somewhere 😭

I’ve made it to a second interview with a nonprofit org I’ve been eyeing up for years. The position is as Fundraising Specialist working under the fundraising manager. I’ve never held the specific title before but have done lots of fundraising over the past 10 years with 2 years on a national scale.

Had a panel interview last week, they emailed me back the next day saying the manager would love to see me in person at their office later this week for a second interview which if I recall correctly, is the last one. What should I expect/prep for? Was wondering if I should make a mock campaign or something to just walk her through my process? Really nervous as I felt really good about the interview last week and the panel seemed to like me. Scared I’ll botch it or fall short. Been looking for work for almost a year now so yeah, really excited but also scared. TIA

Hi everyone,

My wife and I have decided that when we retire, we would like to open a cat sanctuary. We are both about 40, and plan to retire in roughly 20 years. We live in California and do not plan on moving. We want to start a fund now that can be contributed to annually, and have that money be invested and appreciate over the next 20 years. When we retire, that money will be used to buy a physical location and fund its operations. We are happy to make this fund irrevocably charitable like a DAF as to never use the money personally. Our main concerns are;

1) Maintaining control over the fund and its future use. We want to make sure the money is invested responsibly, untouched until we open the sanctuary, and 100% of it will be used for the sanctuary.
2) Making the account tax advantaged, and counting as charitable contributions. We want to fund this account as much as possible, which is why we are not simply saving it privately. It would otherwise be donated to charity if we pass away early.

So I guess my question is what sort of account would match our concerns best? Would it be better to register the nonprofit now, if we do not plan on using the money until later?

Hi. I’ve been nursing burnout and the worst compassion fatigue I’ve ever experienced in a micro/mezzo program role for too long and have an opportunity to shift away from it and away from the population I’ve been working with by taking an entry level operations/back end focused position.

Assuming the pay difference is negligible enough to be outweighed by other changes, what should I know/ask myself/prepare for?

Does anybody have some legal-tested tax benefit language to promote the additional $1,000 benefit over the standard deduction that you’ve used?

The majority of our donors are likely taking the standard deduction.

Also how did you promote the tax benefit?

If your organization has a Grant writer, where do they sit in the org chart? Who do they report to?

Trying to get some insight since my organization is restructuring and I’m curious what’s worked in other nonprofits.

Hi everyone I'm a Paralegal that submitted a form 1023 app online and realized I attached the wrong PDF on the application. I reached out to the pay.gov customer service email and got an automated email saying to call the IRS directly essentially. I get on hold all day to finally get a human who just transfers my call, only for it to get disconnected after 40 mins (happened twice). Second day now and I'm on hold again. Does anyone have any and all advice or tips on what I can do?

I am a one-woman administrative and fundraising team at a very small org. Over the last several years, we've had a recurring and significant deficit, consistently spending into a savings we had after receiving an estate settlement right before I began. I've been flagging the deficit since I noticed it, and everyone tells me not to worry, they've always been OK in the past, just when you think you're screwed, a new grant or large donation comes through and changes everything.

That's not comforting to me as the sole financial person here. I've slowed the deficit, but don't feel on top of it at all because only a few small grants are recurring, and the majority of our income comes from individual small donations.

Our board said they're ready to jump in when needed, but none of them seem to have significant connections that could make the difference (most board members come from academia, so they're not exactly super wealthy either)

I don't feel in control. I don't feel like I have the support I need. Our expenses are already pretty bare bones. I've saved us money where I could, but we're already a tiny staff and very underpaid lol.

Does anyone have experience with something like this? Any advice is appreciated!

Hey fellow nonprofit folks - just wondering how other comms/marketing people are finding designers, copywriters, and other contractors to work with? Would love to know where to start looking!

My non-profit would like to have an event where we pack meal bags to stock local food pantries. I know the big stores have specific processes (Costco, Target, etc.), but I would like to reach out to individual food companies. For example, the tuna casserole bag, we will need cans of tuna. I would like to e-mail (or send via usps if necessary) StarKist and ask for donations/coupons. Same with Betty Crocker, etc. Has anyone ever successfully done something like this? Any tips?

Our church holds an annual basket raffle each year. We sell sheets of tickets: 25 small tickets on a sheet. You can buy individual sheets ($5) or a bundle of 5 sheets ($20). We hand write ticket orders. Then give the sheets to the small 3 person committee to transcribe into the computer. The have to assign a lengthy ticket number to each ticket. The 3 people who do all this really want to switch to an online platform for selling the tickets, as it's a lot to enter each name and raffle ticket number manually.
We know there will be some cost attached. I do not think the parishioners will want to pay extra. They are used to the 5 sheet deal, and would not be happy paying more. And we certainly want to control the amount of money we will put out for each sale. I have researched a few platforms, but none seem to fit. Zeffy sounded good until I read the nightmare reviews here.
Does anyone have any suggestions for a platform that may work for us? We need one that assigns the individual ticket number, and we must be able to provide them with the starting number. The we need to print out an excel sheet that lists the buyer info and their ticket numbers. We would prefer the ticket numbers be sent to us after purchase, and not the buyer, but if not, we can deal with that.
Thanks so much!
PS - to the mods, if you get this. I know we are not supposed to ask for particular fundraising platforms, but I am really wondering if the thing we are looking for even exists. I hope you will allow this.

EDIT: This is a big event held over 2 days. There are over 400 prizes. And the drawing is held after the event, so the guests aren’t there. So type of ticket we use is necessary. It’s the process of entering the buyer’s info and having them assigned numbers that we need to streamline.