I talk to a lot of development directors who feel stuck.
They have ideas. They see what needs to change. They know the donor stewardship is too thin, the systems are too loose, and the follow-up is inconsistent. But they’re waiting. Waiting for the board to get on the same page. Waiting for the executive director to prioritize fundraising. Waiting for someone to give them the green light.
Most of the time, that green light is never coming. And you don’t actually need it.
You Already Have More Authority Than You Think
Most fundraisers dramatically underestimate how much they can do right now, today, without a single committee meeting or board vote.
You can pick up the phone and call your top 20 donors this week. Not to ask for money. Just to say thank you, share a quick update on the program they funded, and ask how they’re doing. Nobody needs to approve that.
You can start tracking your donor interactions in a simple spreadsheet if your CRM is a mess. Name, last contact, next step, date. It takes ten minutes to set up and five minutes a day to maintain. That’s a moves management system. It’s not fancy, but it works.
You can rewrite your next appeal letter so it leads with a story instead of a paragraph about your organization’s history. You can add a handwritten note to the next batch of acknowledgment letters. You can send a personal email to a lapsed donor you’ve been meaning to reach.
None of these require a strategic plan or a budget increase. They require you to decide to do them.
Leadership is Action, Not Title
The best fundraising programs are not always led by the person with the biggest title. They’re led by the person who decided to stop waiting and start doing.
Leadership in fundraising looks like consistency. It looks like making 5 donor calls a week even when nobody asked you to. It looks like building a follow-up system because you got tired of letting good donors slip through the cracks. It looks like sending impact updates because you know donors need to hear what their gifts made possible.
The fundraisers who build the strongest programs are the ones who act like leaders before anyone calls them one.
But What About Buy-In?
I hear this question all the time: “How do I get my board (or my ED) to support fundraising?”
Here’s what I’ve seen work, over and over: stop asking for buy-in and start showing results. When you quietly improve your stewardship and a lapsed donor comes back with a bigger gift, people notice. When you build a simple tracking system and can report exactly where every major prospect stands, that gets attention. When your renewal rate ticks up because you’re actually following up, leadership takes note.
You don’t need a PowerPoint presentation to convince your board that fundraising matters. You need a donor who renewed at twice their previous gift because someone on your team bothered to call them. That does more convincing than any slide deck ever will.
Start This Week
Pick one thing. Just one. Maybe it’s calling five donors to say thank you. Maybe it’s setting up a simple tracking sheet for your top prospects. Maybe it’s rewriting one paragraph in your next appeal.
Do it this week. Don’t wait for a meeting, a plan, or permission.
The nonprofits that raise the most money are not the ones with the best strategic plans sitting in a binder. They’re the ones where someone decided to lead, starting with what they could control. If you’re reading this newsletter, I’d bet you’re already that person. So stop waiting for permission and get to work.
Photo Credit: Mario Aranda from Pixabay
