Nonprofits Can’t Afford to Skip Professional Development
When it comes to nonprofit budgeting, there’s one thing that rarely makes the budget. Professional development.
There are a multitude of reasons for this: Conferences are expensive and often require travel. Training requires time away from the office when teams are usually stretched thin as it is. Nonprofits are penalized for spending money on anything that isn’t programming.
So it’s no surprise that an informal poll on LinkedIn showed that 43% of nonprofits had $0 budgeted for professional development.
I've been the fundraiser who was also the entire development department. I’ve been the brand new manager, promoted into a role with no management experience. The roles where I did my best work were undoubtedly the ones where I had access to professional development resources and opportunities to learn how to do my work better.
When nonprofit professionals are given the time and resources to learn, connect with their peers, and build new skills, they grow in their capacity and ability to do their work well.
Professional development isn't just a benefit for employees. It's an investment in the organization's ability to do its work well.
Professional Development is a Retention Strategy
Nonprofit work isn’t easy.
Staff are constantly navigating changing funding environments, evolving best practices, shifting expectations from donors and funders, increasingly complex workplace dynamics, new technology (particularly in regards to AI), and often, more responsibilities than could reasonably fit into one job description.
And in small- to mid-sized nonprofits, those challenges are compounded by limited capacity and resources.
Your development director might be managing a portfolio of donors, writing grants, overseeing your database, producing your annual appeal, supporting the board, and trying to figure out what AI actually means for their job.
Your program director might also be supervising staff, managing partnerships, writing reports, and helping with fundraising.
Your executive director might be doing all of the above.
Professional development gives people an opportunity to step outside the immediate demands of the job and build the skills they'll need to keep doing it well.
That matters for retention.
If someone feels like they've stopped learning, stopped growing, or have no clear path to develop professionally, eventually they may start looking elsewhere for that opportunity.
One of the things my clients struggle the most with is taking a step back and being able to assess what is and isn’t working. When you’re too busy doing everything, there’s no space to think about whether doing everything is actually doing anything.
How Can Nonprofits Budget for Professional Development?
This is where nonprofit professional development gets unnecessarily complicated.
Yes, there are fantastic conferences and trainings that cost hundreds or thousands of dollars. If your organization can afford those opportunities, great.
But professional development doesn't have to mean sending everyone to a conference. And often, those conferences create so much information overload that people rarely know what to bring back.
There are a wealth of free and low-cost professional development resources available to nonprofit professionals.
Webinars
Online Courses
Podcasts
Newsletters
Professional Communities
Peer Learning
Free Guides & Templates
Local Professional Associations
Leadership Resources
The challenge isn't necessarily finding resources. It’s understanding that you don’t have to spend thousands for valuable learning and creating the organizational culture that makes using those resources possible.
What Nonprofits Get Wrong About Hiring and Professional Development
There's another piece of this conversation that I see play out all the time in nonprofit hiring.
Organizations that don’t invest in professional development but still try to hire for that experience. This is exceedingly common with fundraisers and the CFRE (Certified Fundraising Executive). Organizations will post their lengthy job descriptions with a long list of qualifications, such as the CFRE.
Then you look at the benefits offered and there’s no professional development budget.
I understand why organizations want experienced candidates. Hiring someone who already has the skills you need can make a tremendous difference, especially when you're a small team.
But we have to be honest about the expectation we're setting.
You shouldn't expect new hires to have skills you aren't willing to invest in developing.
A job description isn't a substitute for professional development.
You can hire someone with ten years of experience and they will still encounter things they haven't done before. Technology will change. Your organization will change. Their role will change. The fundraising environment will change.
And if you're requiring a professional credential like the CFRE, it's worth asking yourself what message you're sending when you require candidates to demonstrate a commitment to professional development before they join your organization, but don't provide opportunities for professional development once they're there.
Professional development isn't just something employees should be expected to pursue on their own or for the benefit of their next employer. Organizations have a responsibility to develop the people they hire, too.
That doesn't mean you need to pay for every conference, certification, or course an employee wants to take. It means being intentional about creating opportunities for people to grow in their roles and providing at least some resources to help them do it.
How to Create a Culture of Professional Development at Your Nonprofit
Set the example. Nonprofit leaders need professional development too. Even the most seasoned among us benefit from learning what is shifting in the sector, how peer organizations are navigating things, and develop new skills.
Creating a culture of professional development requires everyone in the organization to make time for learning. Set a quarterly professional development day and have everyone share what they’ll be learning that day. Add professional development to annual reviews – not as a benchmark, but as a goal; and share in one-on-ones and team meetings what you’re working on learning that month or quarter.
Make learning part of the job. If professional development is something employees are expected to fit in after everything else is finished, it isn't going to happen. There will always be another email, another donor to call, another grant deadline, another meeting.
Instead, make learning time part of the work – and for nonprofit leaders, that means investing in your own leadership.
That might mean setting aside an hour every other week for professional development or giving staff dedicated time each month to attend a webinar, listen to a podcast, read an article, or take an online course.
It doesn't have to be a huge amount of time. It just has to be time that is actually protected. And that time should be part of the work week, not something that staff are expected to fit in on their own time.
Ask your staff what they want to learn. Professional development shouldn't only be about what leadership thinks someone needs to know.
Ask your employees what skills they want to build. What parts of their job do they want to get better at? What would make them more confident in their role? What do they want to learn that isn't currently part of their job?
Those answers can tell you a lot about both individual development and where your organization may need additional capacity.
You might have a member of your programs team who really wants to learn about social media marketing, or a fundraiser who wants to better understand program evaluation. You can build an internal pipeline within your own staff, just by understanding what people want to learn to do.
Create a professional development budget, even if it’s small. If you can afford to dedicate money to professional development, do it.
And if the amount is modest, that's okay.
A $500 professional development budget doesn't need to compete with a $2,000 conference. It can cover a course, a membership, a book, or registration for several smaller learning opportunities.
The important thing is to make professional development an intentional part of the organization's budget rather than something employees have to request every time they find an opportunity.
Reward their skills. When you have staff working hard at doing their jobs and learning new skills, they should be rewarded. A title change can go a long way. A pay raise is even better.
The Social Impact Staff Retention Survey found that just over 70% of nonprofit staff respondents say they are looking for or considering a new role. Of that figure, 46% percent cite the lack of growth opportunities as the primary reason.
When we think of growth, we often think of promotions, but not everyone is looking to move up in a hierarchical way. Changing someone’s title (and pay) to reflect the work they’re doing can go a long way in helping someone feel like the organization is invested in them. Giving them opportunities to learn new skills is an investment in their growth.
Free and Low-cost Professional Development Resources for Nonprofit Professionals
I've put together a free guide to free and low-cost professional development resources for nonprofit professionals.
It's a curated list of resources I've personally used, been recommended, or found valuable throughout my career in nonprofit fundraising, but it isn’t just for fundraisers.
The list includes opportunities for nonprofit professionals across roles, including:
Courses, certificates, and webinars — for building specific skills without committing to an expensive training program.
Podcasts — because sometimes professional development has to happen while you're walking the dog, commuting, or doing the dishes.
Newsletters — for keeping up with ideas and trends without adding another giant commitment to your calendar.
Professional communities — because learning from other people in the field is one of the most valuable forms of professional development.
Leadership resources — especially for people who are managing teams, managing up, or trying to grow into leadership.
Professional development doesn't have to be expensive.
But it does have to be intentional.
If nonprofits want to retain talented people, build stronger teams, and create organizations where people can do their best work, professional development can't always be the first thing to disappear when the budget gets tight.
Sometimes the investment is money. Sometimes it's time. Sometimes it's simply creating enough space for someone to learn something new.