Been interviewing at a small NP for past 3 months. Round 4. Is this normal to have this long of a gap in interviews, or is it just the awful job market? Is it a summer thing? I know it's not a backfill position. Thank you all for the work you do!♥️
My organization had a longtime donor—and our largest annual contributor—die suddenly and unexpectedly last August.
We have modestly good relations with a few of his children, so after a period of cultivation and stewardship, we asked his daughter to match his annual six-figure gift to our organization before the end of our fiscal year in June. She agreed and made the donation.
Then, in July, we received a larger six-figure donation from a donor-advised fund that the father had occasionally used to grant to us, and it seems his oldest son has inherited decision making authority and gave us a substantial grant to make up for his father’s prior giving history. We didn’t solicit this donation, but it’s not entirely a surprise that his son would use the DAF to continue giving to us. Our CEO did discuss the grant with the son and thank him, but I’m not sure we got as much clarity about what motivated the decision as I (the advancement director) would have liked.
I’m curious what people would suggest about how we approach the two children moving forward. It’s not clear to us whether they both realize that they collectively gave us over half a million dollars in the past two months, and we don’t want either side to “compare notes” and feel like we took advantage of the uncertainty around the father’s death to secure a lot more funding than we typically get.
But at the same time, we don’t want to disclose each other’s giving or let either side think their respective generosity is unneeded.
It’s sort of delicate, because we’d like to continue the giving relationship with both children (and there’s another who has also donated to us), but especially because the father’s death was a tragic surprise and also his estate plans weren’t as “tidy” as his kids would have liked, I think it’s possible that both children thought they were just acting on their father’s behalf and perhaps they would have chosen to give differently if they were communicating their own philanthropy with each other.
Does anyone have any suggestion for how best to handle this “double” gift? We want to respect everyone’s privacy and assume they’re making informed decisions about their own giving, but we also don’t want to overlook a possible “conflict” in how they were trying to honor their dad’s commitments.
Looking for thoughts: Non profit with no staff. One board member is rude so much so that the last 2 new board members quit within months: a third is read to go— and the board is a whopping 6 people. I have asked the offending trustee to reread his emails and notice the tone before he sends them. His response was ‘I’m not going to change’.
My issue is I don’t know how to talk to him to explain that he is going to bring down the organization with his attitude. Is the ‘you’ve been asked to watch your attitude and when you refuse to help with tasks you are a detriment to the org’ too harsh? As president can I put him on ‘probation’? Or do I take another approach? His title is Secretary but the recording of minutes etc have been delegated to others as he couldn’t keep details in order. Press release duty has been transferred as he refused to write them and email according to best practices. He’s in his 80s and has been volunteering for 20+ years. Or do I just wait it out and find perspective board members to fill in in the new year and simply not ask him to help on any programs or projects for the remainder of the year as when he’s been asked he declines or is nasty.
Anyone else also find that a small staff and conference season just about wipes you out. Recently we went to two national conferences plus a regional thing, flights go on personal cards and then they wait on us, our cycle is a monthly batch so someone booking in early September isnt seeing that money until like October.
The two people who claimed late last year were both part time, I dont think that's a coincidence and i don't love what it says about us, other half of it is grant funded so every flight has to land against the right grant, not a general travel bucket. How are the rest of you doing this without making staff be the bank
Hey all, I know this sub does not allow for soliciting or promoting, so I'm curious where anybody has had success networking in our sector besides LinkedIn? I'm fully remote, so it's tough to find any in-person opportunities. Thanks, all!
I help coordinate volunteers for a food rescue organization.
New colunteers complete a form, attend orientaion, send docs, join whatsapp, choose a location and shadow someone before their first shift.
The process works but one coordinator tracks most of it manually. We mapped the steps and found 9 separate messages before someone can start.
what parts of volunteer onboarding have you automated without making the experience impresonal? We're small so we don't need enterprise software. We mainly need fewer handoffs.
I can never tell. My title is 'Project Manager' but my deliverables include so many other things that it often feels like I spend more time doing the project than actually managing the project.
I'm managing a huge project within a small team, I'm doing almost all the comms for that project and the graphic design, as well as writing up case studies and developing relationships with new supporters of the project. I've been in the role for three years and I can never get my head around the different gear changes.
It doesn't help that every year I'm also expected to basically completely overhaul the project's framework and theory of change. My manager also used to manage the project and fights me on every detail so things take forever to get over the line.
I'm looking at my deliverables for August, and there's some I've hardly touched.
Can anyone relate? How do you cope?
(And yes: I am applying for jobs elsewhere)
It feels like the nonprofit sector has been run by individuals who either didnt make it in corporate or those who want to change it to corporate. This year has been so exhausting with so many rules and restrictions with more workload being added to everyone's plate without the compensation.
I want to know if my timeline expectations on an incident report as unreasonable. My only comparison is to work places and a couple lawyers who I know that think I’m reasonable, but they were comparing to workplaces as well. I am a volunteer.
Start of July, I submitted an incident report for events involving an executive board member(now referred to as OBM) and me that resulted in my extreme mental distress to the rest of executive membership(now referred to as EM). The mental distress had been witnessed by the EM during the events and ended with me nearly hospitalized. It took a few days due to gathering evidence & prioritizing my mental health.
3.5 weeks later, I had a meeting with the EM. This meeting included EM proposing a mediated meeting between myself and OBM once OBM was aware of the incident report. They said they found OBM to be the at fault party based on my evidence. 1 week after the meeting, 1 of EM reported they were waiting on a response from a mediator.
This was 2 weeks ago. 6.5 weeks have passed since my incident report and OBM have made several hostile messages towards myself in public messaging forum, to the point other board have messaged me concerned about why this is occurring. I have not contacted OBM myself nor has OBM contacted me. OBM’s responses have been to public messages I made to overarching board.
When I have dealt with inter-personal conflict that rose to this level at a job, usually the at fault party would have been aware of action plan/PiP, etc. within a week or two of incident/within a week of investigation being finished (which I am defining as of the meeting 3 weeks ago). OBM has been hostile to me as recent as this weekend in public forum, with EM not stepping in during any of these occurrences.
I feel like by now…something should have occurred. Is 6.5 weeks and counting a normal/expected timeline for accountability and action or am I right in feeling this is being dragged on, leaving me vulnerable to further hostility and harm?
What do I do when my immediate supervisor has been unsupportive, staff walks on eggshells, and HR is not doing their job?
When the executive director is abusive and sides with your supervisor and HR?
And when the executive board has yelled at staff during an all staff meeting?
Obviously I am looking for another job but cannot afford to quit.
In California.
Recently accepted an offer at another npo that would effectively give me a raise in the 40%ish range between pay and benefits. My current npo begged me to stay offering to match my salary with a better title (same essentially as what I’m moving into. But only offered match in salary. The ceo couldn’t wrap their head around how to match benefits which are far better at the new job (simply paying a cash equivalent is apparently a hard concept to arrive at).
Because for some crazy reason I actually care, I offered to help them out thru an upcoming big event by doing some night and weekend contract work while they transition in a new person. Their board flat out refused my offer, and are promoting a somewhat inexperienced employee to a role two steps above where they are at to cover my role, and moving over a completely inexperienced employee to cover theirs instead.
It’s sad to see them shoot themselves in the foot so to speak, but just reaffirms my decision to leave the dumpster fire for a more professional organization.
And to top it off, not only am I to frantically attempt to train the replacement who has no formal training, but also do so while they train their replacement. And the cherry on top? They send me the agreement stating they will remote wipe my phone if I don’t provide it to IT to verify removal of all accounts (which I proactively did so they can’t do so), and a list of equipment to return that was already returned years ago when I upgraded my wfh setup with my own money. The exit interview is going to be spectacular…
What’s your stories about similar situations? I can’t be the only one dealing with this level of pettiness upon leaving.
Edit: forgot to add the multitude of snide remarks upon the announcement of my leaving of “good for you! Not for us…”
I am genuinely looking for perspective because I come from another country, and I am starting to wonder whether my expectations about workplace accountability and how you address a supervisor are different from what is normal in the US.
I have been a director at a small nonprofit for almost two years. My primary area is finance, although like many people in a small nonprofit, I do a lot outside of my official area.
We currently do not have an onsite manager, so I also end up overseeing operational controls. I verify orders, cash handling, inventory related information and other things happening onsite. Because of that structure, I am technically one of the people supervising the employee involved in this situation, even though I am not physically onsite every day.
He is a part time, nonmanagement employee who has been with the organization for years and works primarily onsite. We generally see each other once a week during our weekly team meeting.
I barely manage him on a day to day basis. Most of what I ask him for is very basic and connected to my responsibilities. For example, I might ask him to count the cash registers so I can do the books or verify something onsite.
There has been an ongoing issue with our POS system since January. I asked him to take care of it, gave him the resources to do so, and told him that if he needed help, we could look at it and figure it out together. I wasn’t expecting him to be an IT specialist. I expected him either to use the resources available to resolve it or come back to me so we could solve it together. He constantly avoided to respond to my emails about it or meet while we were both onsite to discussed it.
Months later, it still had not been done.
During our regular weekly team meeting, where we address organization events issues and what can be done to fix it, the issue came up again. He said that I had told him not to do it, when I had actually been asking him for months to take care of it.
That frustrated me, and in front of the team I firmly said something along the lines of, “This is unacceptable. I have been asking you to do this since January and it still hasn’t been done.”
I did not yell or insult him, but I was firm.
Afterward, I asked him to meet with me privately later so we could address what had happened.
His response was: “I don’t know if I want to meet with you.” In a very sharp tone.
That honestly shocked me.
We were both already at work. He is hourly, and any time spent in the meeting would be paid.
I responded: “As your superior, I am requesting a meeting. It is mandatory.”
This is where I made a wording mistake that I completely own and I apologized right away. English is not my first language. I meant “As your supervisor,” not “as your superior.”
He responded very sharply and in what I perceived as a mocking and confrontational way, essentially saying: “You are my supervisor. You are not superior to me. Don’t think you are superior to me.”
I agree with the literal point. My position obviously does not make me superior to him as a human being. That was never what I meant. I used the wrong English word while trying to explain that this was a required workplace conversation rather than an optional conversation between coworkers.
What bothered me is that his “I don’t know if I want to meet with you” came before I made the language mistake.
He then told me that I am “never here” and essentially said that if I wanted to meet with him, I needed to come in according to his schedule.
Again, we already have a regular day when we are both onsite. I wasn’t asking him to come in unpaid or on a day off. I was asking for a paid work meeting while we were both already there.
We eventually had a formal meeting with the Executive Director.
This is actually the part I am most conflicted about.
The employee said that I had hurt his feelings by saying in front of the team that he had not completed the task. The Executive Director told me that I should never address an employee’s performance that way in front of the team and asked me to apologize.
I did apologize. I can understand the principle that individual corrective feedback should be handled privately, even though the issue itself had come up during the team meeting.
The employee also apologized for being rude to me.
However, during the same conversation, the Executive Director compared the conflict between this employee and me to the disagreements that the Executive Director and I have with each other. He said that he and I “fight all the time.”
The disagreements between the Executive Director and me are generally financial or structural disagreements about how the organization should operate. We are both directors and members of the leadership team, so I have always viewed those disagreements as two senior people challenging each other on organizational decisions.
That is why the comparison bothered me.
This employee is not a director or a manager. Yet during this conversation I felt as though the situation was being framed almost like a disagreement between two peers rather than a conflict involving an employee and someone responsible for supervising his work.
At the same time, the Executive Director did tell the employee that he needs to step up, take greater responsibility and actually get things done. He specifically explained that the employee cannot move into a management position if he does not demonstrate that level of accountability.
So I left the meeting with mixed feelings.
On one hand, the Executive Director clearly acknowledged the underlying performance problem and told the employee that his lack of follow through is preventing him from becoming a manager.
On the other hand, I felt that the employee was somewhat protected from the seriousness of the situation. I was required to apologize for hurting his feelings, the conflict was compared to disagreements between two directors, and the conversation felt more like smoothing things over than establishing a clear distinction between a management disagreement and an employee resisting supervision.
Maybe the Executive Director was simply trying to deescalate the situation and preserve the working relationship. I can understand that possibility too.
But I am genuinely unsure whether this is normal.
I have never spoken to one of my own bosses the way this employee spoke to me. If my manager requested a paid work meeting while we were both already working, it would never have occurred to me to respond, “I don’t know if I want to meet with you.”
Maybe some of my reaction is cultural, which is why I am asking.
Is this normal in American workplaces, particularly small nonprofits?
Was I wrong to expect a nonmanagement employee to attend a required, paid work meeting while we were both already at work?
Was I wrong to firmly correct the record during the team meeting when he said I had told him not to complete something that I had actually been requesting for months?
I understand the argument that I should have waited and addressed his performance privately, and I apologized for that.
But was the way he addressed me and resisted the meeting within normal professional boundaries?
And for managers or HR people, does the Executive Director’s handling of the situation sound appropriate? Was asking me to apologize and comparing our interaction to disagreements between two directors a reasonable way to deescalate the situation, or does it blur the reporting structure too much?
I am genuinely trying to determine whether I need to adjust my expectations as a manager in an American nonprofit/even normal private sector company or whether my workplace has an unusually conflict avoidant approach to accountability.
We’ve recently hired a gift processor to take over inputting gifts in our donor databse. Until recently this was done by an accountant.
I realized that for employee giving programs (like Benevity, Cybergrants) often Benevity is getting the hard credit and the donor is soft credited. This does not seem right, but I get why an accountant would do it that way!
For employee giving programs, how do you track crediting in your system?
Potentially have an offer for an internship with the IRC and would love to hear people's insights on whether or not it's worth it. For context, I'm a recent graduate trying to build up my resume a bit more since the job market is so intense. Not necessarily interested in non-profit work specifically, but wouldn't mind it nonetheless. What's really holding me back is that it is an unpaid internship. I don't want to waste my time doing mundane tasks for free which I know a lot of interns experience in other companies/organizations.
This is a question for anyone hiring institutional giving positions (grant writers, managers, associate directors - mid-career grant roles).
What are you looking to be communicated in a cover letter for this type of position specifically, beyond what's listed in the resume?
I'm trying to come up with a checklist/default outline so I can make sure I'm highlighting the right strengths and accomplishments. I have been a freelance grant writer for 4.5 years (total of 9-ish years total as a grant writer) and am looking to go back to a salaried position for cash flow stability and focus (task switching between clients and managing the admin end on top of doing the actual work is exhausting).
This is hard advice to find on the general internet, because everyone keeps saying "no one reads the cover letters", but as an institutional fundraiser whose main job is to write grants, I have always thought of the cover letter as the first writing sample, so I really can't phone it in.
Thanks for your help!
This is moreso a vent/seeking advice.
Me: assistant director for a regional event that raises $2M.
New director: lives 45 minutes away, also not really new (boomerang from the early/mid 2000s)
Hosted a happy hour/meet and greet with some of our fundraisers that live locally to me - director lives 45 minutes away. This is partially being hosted so she can meet her new portfolio of top fundraisers and corporate partners. I get a note day-of that she’ll be an hour late because she wanted to bring her boyfriend and he couldn’t leave til later. Me not wanting to rock the boat didn’t outright say no (nor did I think it was my place) but instead made sure to note the timing - like hey some of our folks won’t be there that long, this is only an hour and a half scheduled so that’ll be a long drive for 30 minutes, etc.
Of course, people left. A few were a little annoyed that she wasn’t there - I noted rush hour traffic to cover her. But her boyfriend didn’t talk to anyone, just followed her around - he’s not connected to the mission, he’s not a fundraiser himself. And yes she can drive, yes she can drive at night.
Am I crazy to be a little annoyed that I had to run this solo (we always run these with two - this was around 30 people in attendance) and that she wasn’t this late just to bring him? It’s a happy hour but it’s still work - and this was her time to be introduced to and steward her portfolio. She’s already dropped a light ask to change up the normal schedule for these so he can come with her again.
I’m new at a large university. It feels like every leadership decision out of our central fundraising office has been bad and really poorly received by the individual units and schools. Most people don’t even pay attention to new directives and initiatives since they seem so unserious. So much administrative bloat, terrible new dashboards and data practices that seem to revolve more around their metrics than practical fundraising standards. The university annual giving team is just putting out AI slop gift appeals. University gift officers come across like lularoe salespeople, a lot of jargon, and no clear direction or fundraising initiatives they seem to be championing. Just endless recruiting appeals for campaign council groups. Is anyone else seeing this at their institutions? Is the central university development office always kind of Mr Magoo-ing around in the background and the real fundraising happens within each unit?
Very confused as this place had a terrific reputation and this is my first job in higher ed. Would love to hear from others.
I'm feeling increasingly demotivated at work because there is basically no clear path for advancement, and I think a big part of the problem is a management bottleneck.
I work at a small nonprofit, so there aren't a ton of positions to begin with. My direct manager has been here for a long time and is in her 60s. She's told me she's not ready to retire because she can't afford to. Above her is a director who has also been with the organization for around 15 years. So the same few people have occupied the management positions for a very long time.
I'm not saying anyone is obligated to retire just because they've been somewhere a long time or because they're getting older. Obviously people should be able to keep working as long as they want and are able to. But from the perspective of someone below them, it creates this weird career bottleneck.
There isn't really an obvious next step for me. I can take on more responsibilities, develop new programs, teach new classes, etc., but there doesn't seem to be a corresponding position for me to move into. I'm basically supposed to become increasingly competent at my current job while waiting for someone above me to either leave, retire, or have their position otherwise become available.
And honestly, that's demotivating.
I don't want my career progression to depend on hoping that my manager retires. I also don't want to sit around secretly rooting for someone to leave or have health problems just so I can move up. That's not a healthy career strategy.
The frustrating part is that I actually want to grow professionally. I'm not necessarily looking to become some high-powered executive—I just want to feel like there's a trajectory. If I'm doing more sophisticated work and taking on more responsibility, I'd like there to be some way to advance rather than just accumulating more duties at the same level.
Has anyone else worked somewhere where management was basically a permanent fixture and it created a promotion bottleneck? How did you deal with it? Did you eventually create your own path elsewhere, or did you stay and wait for something to open up?
I am very new to non profit. I mainly assist with the design of their marketing materials for events, some social media, etc. this year I am tasked with assisting with the end of year appeal letter. It’s a 4 page format and the non profit is animal based. Raising fund to help local pets, community cats, etc. does anyone have any examples, advice or launching points they can share for successful eoy appeals?
Thank you!
What types of nonprofit jobs could utilize someone from insurance sales?
I am not built for the corporate life for constantly funneling money to CEO pockets. It is eating me alive and I really just comes down to my purpose. It has nothing to do with the grind and my work load (although heavy), I just can’t function knowing the harder I work the more I am feeding the machine.
I have been looking to get into nonprofit work but based on salaries I need a higher level job within the nonprofit sector. I assume with any nonprofit job you wear many hats, which I am very used to.
Is there a specific role to look out for that could utilize strong insurance knowledge, funding (sales), leadership, etc.
I just want to do something meaningful…