What Your Nonprofit Development Director Job Description Is Really Saying to Candidates

There’s a crisis in the nonprofit sector. Fundraising staff turnover is the highest it has ever been. What was already a low average tenure of 18-24 months is now only 16-18 months.

As a recovering Development Director, I can tell you exactly what’s driving this:

• Unrealistic workloads leading to burnout.

• High pressure from aggressive fundraising goals.

• Moving goal posts – a fundraiser exceeding last year’s goal, only to have the goal increased again without any additional resources or capacity.

• Misaligned expectations about what someone can reasonably accomplish in a given year.

And more often than not, I can look at the job description for a Director of Development and tell you whether or not the position is set up for someone to stay and succeed.

Why your job description matters more than you think

I have this suspicion that most job descriptions are copied and pasted from other job descriptions. It’s pretty remarkable how similar some positions look to one another, even when they’re in completely different issue areas or geographies.

Writing a job description by looking at other job descriptions and copying and pasting the best or most relevant parts might seem like a good path, but that method is actually hurting your search.

When someone on your development team leaves, most organizations don’t think about it in terms of cost. But research shows that it can cost 1.5 to 2 times a person’s annual salary in lost productivity, onboarding, and training.

Your job description is a candidate's first impression of your organization — and it's often what decides whether they apply at all. Experienced fundraisers aren't just looking for salary and responsibilities or mission alignment; they’re looking to see whether the role is one they can succeed in.

The biggest red flags in your Director of Development job description

The biggest flaw with most positions for fundraising staff is that they’re written for the organization, not the candidate. I’ve spent over a decade in nonprofit fundraising, and I’ve seen thousands of positions – as a candidate, as a hiring manager, and as a consultant who works with organizations to build roles that allow people, and in turn, the organization, to thrive.

This list reflects language from an actual position posted on LinkedIn, with my take on what those responsibilities are really saying about the position and what a candidate might be thinking as they’re reading through this.

Fundraising and Strategy

Create and implement comprehensive fundraising plans, including an annual giving campaign, major gifts, corporate sponsorships, foundation grants, and establish a planned giving program.

These are different skillsets. A candidate who has secured millions in corporate sponsorships and foundation grants may have zero experience in annual or planned giving. Lumping them together doesn't make the role more comprehensive — it makes it harder to fill.

Events, Donor Relationship & Stewardship

Cultivate, solicit, and steward existing donors as well as prospects to grow the organization's donor base and improve donor retention rates. Conduct an average of three major donor meetings per month to meet or exceed fundraising goals. Use CRM data to segment audiences and guide donor engagement strategies. Build and maintain relationships with corporate sponsors, foundations, government entities, and community partners. Ensure strong stewardship practices to meet donor expectations and strengthen long-term relationships. Oversee all aspects of annual event planning, volunteer management, sponsorships, and related coordination.

This is all one section. Donor relations and stewardship belong together. That part makes sense. But I’m already wondering how this fits in with leading corporate partnerships, foundation grants, and planned giving as well.

Event planning is a job in and of itself. It’s time consuming and requires skills that many fundraisers don’t have. Sourcing venues, coordinating vendors, figuring out logistics, managing volunteers, seeking sponsorship, the list goes on. When I've been responsible for planning events, I did little else in the months leading up to the event. When a Development Director is hired and expecteed to lead all aspects of event planning for an organization that does more than one event this year, there’s little room for them to do anything else.

Communications & Marketing

Lead communications strategy ensuring consistent messaging across multiple platforms. Oversee all organizational communications, including website content, newsletters, social media, press relations, and the annual report.

Communications and Development are two different jobs. The two should work closely together — but they are not the same role. Expecting one person to lead both is asking one person to fill two full-time positions. Combining these two roles is one of the fastest ways to send a candidate running. I know excellent nonprofit Marketing & Communications experts. I don’t know a single one who also has experience with planned giving and database management.

Database Management

Manage and track donor contributions; oversee donor acknowledgment, receipts, and reporting in partnership with staff.

Do you know how long it takes to issue tax receipts in January? I once hired contract support specifically for this task. It took her 80 hours. How is a Director of Development and Communications — who is also planning events, building corporate partnerships, writing grants, and managing social media — supposed to absorb that on top of everything else? This one line woefully underestimates how time-consuming data management actually is. And frankly, you shouldn't be hiring someone with Director-level experience to issue tax receipts.

Grant Management

Research, qualify, and engage new foundations. Manage all grant proposals and reporting.

Early in my career, I was a full-time grant writer. This single bullet point was my entire job. Unless your organization submits one grant per year, managing grants is a full-time job. Tucking this into a job description that already has several other responsibilities woven into it is a clear signal that an organization doesn’t actually know or understand what their biggest fundraising priorities are.

This isn't even everything. I pulled these responsibilities from an actual job description with 28 bullet points.

The qualifications section asked for demonstrated ability to cultivate and secure five and six-figure gifts, experience planning major fundraising events, leading communications, including social media, CRM proficiency across multiple platforms, and grant writing experience.

These are different skillsets. Someone with experience in grant writing may have never cultivated a gift or planned an event. Someone with high-level communications experience may have never written a grant. Sure, you might find someone who has experience doing all of these things, but it is completely unrealistic for one role to manage and deliver on all of these responsibilities at the same time, in a single role.

Whenever I write about positions like this on LinkedIn, I get pushback that someone with a Director-level title isn't actually doing all of this — they're overseeing it. But here's the thing: this position, and most of the ones that look like it, doesn't indicate any kind of management responsibility in the actual job responsibilities or required qualifications. If the position is expected to manage staff, that needs to be explicitly stated. If it doesn’t, it’s a signal to the candidate that they’ll be a “team” of one, responsible for delivering on every item on this list. If it does, it tells them that managing people is part of the role. That's important. Not everyone has management experience. Not everyone wants to be a manager. And, not everyone is good at managing.

And then there's this, tucked into "Other Requirements": the ability to lift up to 20 lbs and stand for extended periods of time.

In over a decade of fundraising, I have never found either of these requirements critical to the job. Listing physical requirements that have no bearing on the actual work isn't just unnecessary — it's ableist. It's also remarkably common in nonprofit roles.

So what should a Development Director job description look like?

This should vary by organization. If you’re hiring an experienced fundraiser on your team, whether they’re a Director of Development or Chief Development Officer, you need clarity on what skills they need to bring to the table.

In this post, I wrote about what a sustainable fundraising strategy actually looks like. One of the things I share is the importance of knowing your different funding sources and how much of your revenue they make up. This is important for hiring.

If the majority of your fundraising comes from one type of revenue – say, individual giving – you should be hiring someone with extensive experience with individual giving.

If your organization has never had a planned giving program and is considering launching one, that’s probably a good role for a consultant to fill to get it off the ground, rather than looking for someone with that direct experience on top of everything else.

The point is, these everything-and-the-kitchen-sink roles are hurting your organization. They’re a clear indication that your organization doesn’t have the strategic direction to hire well.

Think about it: If you do hire someone into a role like this, where do they even start? What would be their first 90-day priorities? How will their performance be measured? These are questions that candidates will likely ask, but with a job description like this, they’re almost impossible to answer.

If you’re not sure how to answer these questions, start with the Fundraising Hiring Guide. It’s a 17-page guide I created that’s designed to help you clarify your organization’s fundraising priorities before you write their job description.

Work through this exercise to get the clarity you need to hire well, so that your next Development Director is brought into a role that’s built for them to succeed.