Running the Development Shop
Directing the work is a different craft than doing it. Plans, budgets, staff structure, and the operating rhythm of a healthy shop.
Through the Arts & Culture lens
Your lookback table has to reconcile contributed revenue with earned revenue, ticket sales and memberships managed by a different department entirely, so the "true net" discipline this module insists on for events matters doubly when a gala's numbers get compared against a season's box office by a board that conflates the two. Strategy lines tied to the patron ladder should name explicitly which increases come from upgraded members versus new contributed dollars, since the two get blurred easily in a single annual report.
Continuing education
1.25 points
Leadership and Management
Learning objectives
- State the four kinds of director work, strategy, people, the relationships only the director can hold, and upward management, and hold the floor of one development visit a week at whatever altitude the role commands.
- Write an annual development plan whose every revenue goal decomposes into donors times rates times amounts, with three to five resourced strategies that each name what the shop will stop doing.
- Build the development budget from the plan as an investment case, compute whole-program cost to raise a dollar, and answer the three budget fights with priced options and per-channel returns.
- Run the weekly 30-minute huddle, the monthly numbers hour, and monthly one-to-ones, and block the director's own calendar for visits, strategy, and stewardship.
Designed for CFRE continuing education. Not yet accepted; no CFRE points can be claimed.
Lessons
- 22 min
Video lesson
From doer to director
I Pause · Leadership and Management
- 30 min
Template· DOCX
The annual development plan
III Discern · Leadership and Management
- 19 min
Field guide· XLSX
Budgeting and defending your budget
VII Multiply · Leadership and Management
- 14 min
Field guide· PDF
The weekly operating rhythm
VI Accompany · Leadership and Management
This is members-only material.
Members get every lesson, template, and worksheet in all eight tracks, plus the support to put them to work in your shop.
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