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 Environment lens
The plan's concentration-risk section needs a campaign-moment line most sectors do not: a spike in giving tied to a crisis or a policy fight can dominate a year's numbers and then vanish, so the sustainer floor beneath it deserves its own protected strategy line rather than getting absorbed into the noise. Where the organization runs both a 501(c)(3) and a 501(c)(4), the budget and the lookback table need a clean split between the two from the start, since blending them creates a compliance problem before it creates a reporting one.
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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