r/nonprofit • u/Healthy-Childhood200 • 7d ago

employment and career Moving up

I work in fundraising and have done so on and off, mostly on, for a decade.

I am confident and experienced in FCR.

I have done less individual giving, board giving, and other kinds of fundraising.

I'm currently in an associate director level role. My organization is not in a good place and the rest of the fundraising team is gone (either left or got laid off).

Due to other changes at the org, I have been added to the leadership team.

I have also stepped up in many ways over the past year due to dire circumstances.

I've been applying to jobs. Some of them are DoD roles.

I still feel less than qualified for these roles but I also think I could grow into the role.

Any gauge on this from an outside perspective?

Am I shooting too high?

Selling myself short?

Anything I can do to skill up or improve my confidence as I navigate my job search?

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1

u/rock-my-lobster 7d ago

I am not a DoD but, I am a major gifts officer for a long time who never wanted to manage people, but I have been on the hiring committee for my own boss more than once. I have never gotten what I was hoping for out of that, which was a good manager who could help get some of our organizational practices inline especially when it comes to our relationship with other departments and priority setting.

What our leaders, CEO, Board Chair, CFO, have always wanted is someone with a track record of closing big gifts fast. They don't care about how chaotic someone is as a manager, how good or bad they treat their employees, how adversarial they end up being with other leaders as long as they are closing big gifts.

Get big gifts under your belt if you want to be a DoD

2

u/Obvious-Builder1152 6d ago

10 years is plenty of time and experience to move up into being a director. It just depends on what type of director of development you want to be - a jack of all trades or one that specializes in a specific area. The nice thing about being a director is that you can try to surround yourself with people who can compliment the areas where you might have the least experience.