Why Your Best Fundraisers Are Leaving

I recently spoke with a major gift fundraiser who had quit her job with a large health care facility. Why? She couldn’t stand the focus on metrics as the reference point against which her work was evaluated. Everything was about numbers, and this prevented her from focusing on truly building relationships with the donors to whom she was assigned.

I felt sad—for her, for the organization that could have used her savvy and empathetic approach to fundraising, and for the would-be donors who might miss an opportunity to make gifts that brought them true meaning and joy.

While numbers and measurements have their place, there is an administrative function to them. They are about order, not emotion. By contrast, the best fundraising is emotional. When fundraisers don’t have the time to actively make donors feel excited and inspired by the work they do, donors will take their money and give it to another organization that does.

Today, by shifting the sector’s resources and attention to data and metrics, we are inadvertently creating fundraising cultures that make it harder for people to do the very thing philanthropy requires most: build genuine human relationships. We increasingly expect fundraisers to produce revenue quickly, measure their worth through quotas and activity metrics, and continually prove their value through numbers.

Then we wonder why donors aren’t giving more. The issue is in large part, I would argue, that fundraising isn’t fundamentally a transaction. It’s a relationship. And relationships require something that our increasingly metrics-driven culture is making harder and harder to find: time.

The Crisis of Fundraiser Retention

Today, by shifting the sector’s resources and attention to data and metrics, we are inadvertently creating fundraising cultures that make it harder for people to do the very thing philanthropy requires most: build genuine human relationships.A recent Stanford Social Innovation Review article by Mark Dobosz calls attention to a crisis of fundraiser retention fueled by cultures that value transactions and unrealistic quotas over transformative, long-term relationship-building. He describes it as “the most consequential threat to the long-term health of the philanthropic sector that I’ve witnessed in four decades of this work.” He notes that senior fundraisers—“the relationship architects, legacy builders, and mission storytellers who have spent careers learning the art of transformational giving”—are retiring.

In my own experience, and from what many development and major gift directors tell me, many others are simply leaving organizations where they no longer have the time, autonomy, or support to do the work they know how to do.

For decades, I’ve been saying some version of this, as have other seasoned fundraising practitioners and consultants: It’s not just about the money. Yet this idea doesn’t seem to be breaking through to management and boards that treat fundraisers like quota machines.

Major gifts don’t emerge from a series of transactions. They emerge from the building blocks of relationships: trust, curiosity, listening, and a genuine understanding of what matters to another human being.

That’s why fundraiser retention isn’t merely an HR concern, but a sector-wide philanthropic concern. When an experienced fundraiser leaves, the organization loses more than an employee. It loses years of accumulated knowledge about donors, institutional history, and relationships that may have taken years to develop. This becomes even more consequential as organizations turn to AI to automate more donor communications and touchpoints. While AI might appear to allow organizations to work more efficiently, we must not make the mistake of confusing efficiency with effectiveness. It is imperative that we remember that people give to people. And, if we’re not careful, we may automate ourselves right out of the relationships that make transformative philanthropy possible.

The Cost of Getting Fundraising Wrong

As I see it, the sector has been treating people—both fundraisers and donors—poorly for years. When gifts are viewed as more important than givers, meaning, joy, and belonging—the psychological fuel propelling philanthropy—get lost in translation. While a perspective that critiques “donor-centered fundraising” as pandering to elites poses some important structural questions for the sector, it may not capture the full picture.

I believe that taking the time to get to know donors, so one can orient fundraising on what they care about, can sometimes be the key to good fundraising. As the late Simone Joyeaux said in a 2016 NPQ article, donor-centered fundraising is “another way of saying ‘building trust.’”

And trust takes time. This is the fundamental mismatch we’re facing: Fundraisers are often expected to produce results on timelines that bear little resemblance to the time required to build the relationships that produce transformational philanthropy.

Over a decade ago, Penelope Burk highlighted the problem of high fundraiser turnover—defined as an average tenure of just 16 to 18 months—in her book Donor-Centered Leadership. A structural mismatch occurs here. A fundraiser may have less than two years in a position, while a major donor relationship may take considerably longer to develop. Burk’s research showed donors are willing to give more, but unleashing their philanthropy at a whole new level depends in significant part on their relationship with the organization’s fundraisers. In other words, without a relationship there is no transformative gift.

The financial consequences are substantial. CapDev, specialists in relationship philanthropy, note it costs nonprofits, on average, 90 percent to 200 percent of a fundraiser’s annual salary in direct and indirect expenses to replace them.

But the true institutional cost can be far greater for high-level development directors and major-gift officers when you factor in stalled campaigns, lost institutional knowledge, and donor relationships that must be rebuilt. As CapDev puts it: “First, fundraising runs on relationships. Donors give to people they trust. When the person who built that trust leaves, the relationship doesn’t automatically transfer to the next hire, however qualified. It has to be rebuilt, which takes six to eighteen months, depending on the donor’s giving history.” This isn’t merely inconvenient and expensive. It undermines the very mechanism through which transformational philanthropy happens.

It’s not about high volume cold calls. It’s about knowing when people actually want to talk about giving—and that’s why we need to stop treating fundraiser turnover as an inevitable cost of doing business. Your organization’s transactional culture may be harming it from the inside out.

Culture Eats Strategy for Breakfast

So, what can organizations do to turn the tide? You’ve likely heard the famous quote, often misattributed to business guru Peter Drucker: “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” While Drucker didn’t actually say those words, the sentiment aligns with his teachings about organizational behavior. Even the most brilliant strategy will fail if an organization’s culture—its daily habits, expectations and attitudes—doesn’t support it.

That’s precisely what’s happening in fundraising. Quota-based strategies are no match for relentless, taskmaster cultures. They yield begrudging gifts, orchestrated by equally begrudging fundraisers and donors.

That’s no way to build a sustainable pipeline of philanthropy. Major gift fundraisers need time to listen, to build trust, to understand what matters to donors, and to help them discover what they want their philanthropy to accomplish. Those relationships may ultimately result in generous, heartfelt, fulfilling philanthropy. But the gift is the outcome of the relationship, not the relationship’s purpose.

Drucker wrote extensively about management as a human endeavor, emphasizing the importance of helping people grow and develop as needs and opportunities change. So, if you want to foster fundraiser and donor growth, start there. Build an organizational culture grounded in values, ethos, and practices that make a real impact—both in the life of the organization and in the life of the donor.

Strategy still matters. Goals still matter. Metrics still matter. But they must serve the culture, not the other way around.

Management Is About Human Beings

A nonprofit is a human and social organization. Its mission, realized by people, exists to serve people.

If we want to retain the people who know how to build transformational philanthropy, we need to stop treating talent retention as an HR initiative and start treating it as a fundraising strategy.

Strategy and metrics matter, too. But when strategy is driven by a quick timeframe rather than a thoughtful sequence of personalized touchpoints—each one building upon the last until the relationship reaches its natural crescendo—philanthropy gets short-circuited, as does the donor’s experience and sense of fulfillment about the work. The giver’s high becomes the giver’s “meh.” And when donors don’t feel known, trusted, or empowered, they move on. They move toward organizations that make them feel smart, empowered, and joyful about their giving, organizations that take the time to discover their intrinsic motivations rather than imposing short-term and organization-centric agendas.

Fundraisers move on, too. Some retire. Others jump ship to organizations where they hope to find a culture more welcoming of the time, patience, and relationship-building required to develop game-changing gifts. And so, the cycle continues: Transactional culture → frustrated fundraisers → broken relationships → disappointed donors → lost philanthropy.

Fundraising Needs a Sea Change

If we want to retain the people who know how to build transformational philanthropy, we need to stop treating talent retention as an HR initiative and start treating it as a fundraising strategy. That means making talent development a strategic imperative. As Drucker put it: “People decisions are the ultimate—perhaps the only—control of an organization.”

So, what might that look like?

1. Create purposeful roles for seasoned practitioners.

Don’t assume retirement means expertise has to disappear. Create advisory, mentoring, or part-time roles that allow experienced fundraisers to pass along the relational knowledge they’ve accumulated over decades. Think of it as building a memory bank of relational capital before it walks out the door.

2. Make relationship-building an apprenticeship.

Don’t leave new fundraisers to figure it out on their own. Pair emerging practitioners with seasoned professionals who can walk alongside them through real donor cultivation and stewardship. You can teach fundraising techniques, but you learn relationship-building by watching someone who knows how to do it.

3. Conduct a culture audit before you lose another fundraiser.

Ask your current and former fundraisers what’s driving people away. Are your quotas realistic? Are caseloads manageable? Do fundraisers have time to cultivate relationships? Are you investing in their professional development? Do your expectations support the kind of fundraising you say you value? And if you’re not sure, ask fundraisers you respect at other organizations what they think.

4. Reimagine the fundraiser as a philanthropy facilitator.

A philanthropy facilitator doesn’t simply do fundraising for an organization. They work with donors, standing by their side as they explore what they care about and how they want to make a difference. In so doing, they accomplish something monumental. The goal isn’t simply to secure the organization’s desired gift. It’s to help a donor write their own philanthropic story. When we do that well, everyone benefits: the donor, the fundraiser, and the organization.

Art + Science

In a recent article for NPQ, Benjamin Alfaro wrote about what distinguishes good development work from great development work. What came as no surprise to me was his description of a synergistic partnership between art and science. Unfortunately, too often the art part—the relational intelligence of creatively reading a room and making joyful, unexpected connections between donors and causes—gets short shrift. The interpretive work, or what sociologist Arlie Hochschild describes as “emotional labor,” gets undervalued in a sea of metrics, spreadsheets, and deadlines. But if we want to retain both donors and the seasoned fundraisers who know how to make them want to stick with us, we need to value—and reward—both science and art.

If you’re fortunate enough to have a fundraiser who knows how to build genuine relationships, don’t get in their way.

This calls for a cultural reframing. A recent essay from Stanford Social Innovation Review by organizational consultant James Lopata traces the nonprofit sector’s current operating logic back to Henry Ford’s 1913 assembly line. Production increased, but workers didn’t thrive in the short-sighted, inhumane conditions. As Robert Gass, author of Transforming Organizations: A Guide to Creating Effective Social Change Organizations, writes: “At their worst, institutions can frustrate our aspirations, stultify our creativity, drain our energy, and even numb our spirits.”

Successful philanthropic cultures require “breathing room,” enabling fundraisers to develop the rhythms and agency required for fruitful outcomes. This means understanding good development work is about givers, not gifts. And good practice means retiring notions of begging, coercing, and even persuading. It’s about inviting people in—opening a door to opportunity, purpose, and joy.

If you’re fortunate enough to have a fundraiser who knows how to build genuine relationships, don’t get in their way. Give them the time to listen, the space to think, the support to grow, and the freedom to build relationships that may not pay off this quarter but could transform a donor’s life—and your organization—for decades.

Ultimately, your organization’s greatest fundraising tool isn’t its database, its CRM, its campaign strategy, or even its case for support. It’s the people who know how to turn relationships into philanthropy. And if we keep driving those people away, we shouldn’t be surprised when philanthropy goes with them.