Hiring, Coaching, and Keeping Fundraisers
The average fundraiser tenure is 16 months. Build a team that stays: hiring for the real job, coaching the craft, and career paths that retain.
Through the Higher Ed lens
This sector has the most structured bands and title ladders of any track, assistant to associate to senior director, so the mastery track in the lattice is close to native, and scorecards can be benchmarked against a wide market of comparable roles at peer institutions. Turnover here is driven as much by lateral moves between universities as by leaving the field altogether, since the craft transfers cleanly across institutions, which makes the stay conversation's "what is pulling you elsewhere" question especially literal.
Continuing education
1.00 points
Leadership and Management
Learning objectives
- State what a fundraiser's departure costs across the search, the vacancy, the ramp, and the relationship damage, and name the retention levers a director fully controls: goals with arithmetic, coaching, recognition, and portfolio sanity.
- Write a job scorecard for a development seat with a one-sentence mission, three to five dated outcomes, craft and wiring competencies, and a realities paragraph, then interview against it with the discovery simulation, the ask test, and the live writing sample.
- Run a monthly 45-minute one-to-one that takes the fundraiser's agenda first, works one scorecard competency, and leaves the numbers for last, with joint visits and a quarterly written check around it.
- Build published pay bands, a three-track career lattice of mastery, scope, and craft leadership, and an annual stay conversation, while keeping compensation clear of percentage-based pay.
Designed for CFRE continuing education. Not yet accepted; no CFRE points can be claimed.
Lessons
- 18 min
Video lesson
Why fundraisers leave (the honest version)
VII Multiply · Leadership and Management
- 20 min
Template· DOCX
Job scorecards for development roles
III Discern · Leadership and Management
- 16 min
Field guide· PDF
The coaching cadence
VII Multiply · Leadership and Management
- 19 min
Field guide· PDF
Compensation and career path frameworks
VII Multiply · 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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