The Pandemic of Development Turnover – Info Fund Raising

You may have noticed a lot of Linked-In promotions for a new book by Jason Lewis titled The War for Fundraising Talent (you can read the Amazon reviews here . It’s great to see the author address the biggest problem in the nonprofit sector: Development staff turnover!

Any of us on the consulting side of the nonprofit vertical have seen the struggle for nonprofit organizations to find and retain talented development staff. Two years is about the average tenure of a development professional. During the person’s first year, they are learning the job (and the insurmountable problems they are asked to solve without any resources) and then the second year they spend looking for a new job.

Sadly, the consultants and agencies often end up being the “keeper” of institutional knowledge. And that’s just not right.

Along with cutting new donor acquisition budgets, development turnover is the biggest problem in the nonprofit sector. Both of these problems suffer from the same root challenge: Shortsightedness.

I’ve never worked on the nonprofit side, but I’d love to hear from those who have and what their ideas are for solving this pandemic.

Share your thoughts below.