Your Program Staff Can Be Your Best Development Partners, If You Let Them.
As a development officer, have you ever found out that a donor made a gift to one of your program staff members without your knowledge? How did you feel when you found out? Be honest.
Early in my career, this happened at one of the schools where I worked. A donor I had been working with for over a year reached out directly to one of our coaches and offered to fund a facility renovation. While this capital project was needed, it wasn't next in our strategic plan. I vividly remember my feelings of betrayal. Thoughts of “Why didn’t the donor call me to discuss this gift? They know I’m their development officer,” and “That coach should have known to loop me in immediately!” crossed my mind.
Years later, a similar situation occurred in the nonprofit world, and I am proud that my response was more mature. Instead of frustration, I expressed my deep gratitude for the donor’s gift and built a strong relationship with our program staff as we collaborated to steward it.
The simple truth is that if we espouse being “relationship-based fundraisers” or adopt a “donor-centric approach,” these encounters are perfect opportunities to practice what we preach. This is especially true as nonprofit organizations struggle with development turnover, inflated salaries, and donors who can smell inauthenticity from a mile away. I’ve come to realize that talented program staff are your best development assets.
Not because development professionals aren’t talented. Not because fundraising expertise doesn’t matter. But because the people closest to your mission, your program staff, your founders, your coaches, your organizational leaders, possess something that can’t be taught in any certification course: a genuine, visceral connection to the work being funded.
The Revolving Door Problem
Let’s start with an uncomfortable statistic: the average tenure of a development professional is just 16 months.
I say this with full awareness of my own contribution to this statistic, for various reasons: better opportunities, difficult circumstances, and pursuing growth. But regardless of the justification, the impact on organizations remains the same.
Think about that. Sixteen months. That’s often less than a full year after onboarding, and not nearly enough time to cultivate the deep relationships that lead to transformational gifts. In an industry so proudly reliant on relationships, this revolving door of development staff dramatically constricts organizational growth.
Meanwhile, half of development directors anticipate leaving their jobs within two years or less, and 40% are unsure whether they’ll continue in fundraising at all.
Now, contrast that with your program director, who has been with you for five years, or your youth coordinator, who has been running the same after-school program for seven years. They’re not going anywhere. They believe in this work because they do this work.
Why Program Staff Are Natural Fundraisers
They Have Authentic Passion
When your program staff talks about your organization’s impact, they’re not reading from a case statement. They’re sharing stories from last Tuesday. They know the names, the faces, the moments that matter.
Donors can detect insincerity immediately. They’ve sat through countless pitches from development officers who are excellent at their jobs but are one step removed from the actual mission. How many of us have fully realized stewardship programs specifically designed to bridge this gap? There is a reason we want our best donors exposed to our best staff. Their passion is unscripted because it’s a lived experience.
They Possess Deep Subject Matter Expertise
Your housing program manager understands the complexities of homelessness policy in ways that would take a new development director months to learn. Your arts education coordinator knows exactly why your curriculum works when others don’t.
This expertise matters enormously in fundraising conversations. Your best donors want to understand not just what you do, but how and why it works. They want to know your methodology, theory of change, the nuances that make your approach distinct, and the problems their funding can solve. Program staff can have those sophisticated conversations without breaking a sweat because they're living the answers every day.
They Build Relationships Organically
Development work is inherently transactional. We're moving people toward a specific outcome: a gift. Donors know this, too. Many of us have even strengthened relationships by acknowledging this dynamic outright. Sincerity, when combined with transparent relationships, is recognized and appreciated.
Program staff build relationships organically through their work. They’re already connected to volunteers, board members, and community leaders who become natural fundraising partners. These aren’t cold prospects; they’re people who already believe in what you do because they’ve seen it firsthand.
Why Development Officers Still Matter
Before my development colleagues revolt, let me be clear: this isn’t about eliminating development positions. Development officers bring critical skills, experiences, and training that many program staff lack. Organizational fundraising success requires both.
Time and Bandwidth
Program staff are busy running programs. Development officers have the time to qualify prospects, conduct research, manage donor pipelines, and handle the administrative infrastructure of fundraising. Authentic relationships take time to develop, and it’s those relationships that ultimately sustain nonprofit work.
Strategic Vision
Development officers view your organization through a philanthropic lens. They can zoom out, see the big picture, and identify funding opportunities and alignments that others might miss. They understand trends in philanthropy, foundation priorities, and how to position your organization competitively.
Comfort with Solicitation
Let’s be honest: asking for money is uncomfortable for many. Development officers have overcome that discomfort through training and repetition. Many program staff haven’t, and some understandably resist it. A good development officer knows how to guide solicitation conversations and close gifts with confidence.
Why This Actually Matters
This isn’t just an interesting observation about nonprofit staffing dynamics. The failure to leverage program staff as fundraisers has real, expensive consequences.
Fundraising Is Prohibitively Expensive
Chief Development Officers are compensated about 85% of what chief executives earn, making them often the highest-paid staff in the organization. There’s typically a significant gap between development salaries and program staff salaries, which can breed resentment and affect retention.
Filling an open gift officer position costs an average of $127,000, including lost time, reduced productivity, and relationship-building with prospects and donors. With a 16-month average tenure, you’re hemorrhaging resources just trying to keep positions filled.
Authenticity Is Irreplaceable
The passion program staff communicate with is extremely difficult to replicate if you aren’t actively involved in the work. Donors have finely tuned authenticity detectors. They know the difference between someone who’s read about your impact and someone who’s created it.
It Solves Two Problems at Once
Acknowledging the fundraising potential of program staff and investing in their development creates a pathway to bridge both the knowledge and salary gaps.
Want to keep your most talented program staff from leaving for better-paying opportunities? Create advancement paths that include fundraising responsibilities and fundraising compensation. Want development officers who actually understand your programs? Promote from within.
Promoting from within saves valuable time and money, especially in today’s hypercompetitive market for development professionals. You’re not training someone on your mission from scratch; you’re training someone who already embodies it to have fundraising conversations.
Moving Forward
The solution isn't to fire your development officers and hand over donor lists to program staff. The solution is to reimagine fundraising as a collaborative function in which program and development expertise work in an intentional partnership.
I've seen this work. At Boston College, we built a model called "Support Your Sport" that put coaches at the center of their program fundraising. These weren't development professionals. They were program staff who knew their athletes, understood their sport's specific needs, and had relationships with alumni who had competed in those same uniforms.
We ran week-long giving campaigns where coaches made direct asks to their natural networks. Development handled the infrastructure: donor research, gift processing, campaign mechanics, and stewardship plans. Coaches managed relationships through personal outreach, authentic storytelling, and direct solicitation.
Year one generated over 3,000 new donors and $1.3 million in revenue. The model continued to grow in scale annually. Not because we hired more development officers, but because we acknowledged that coaches were already fundraisers. We just needed to support them in doing it systematically.
That model works beyond athletics. Your housing program manager has relationships with former clients, volunteers, and community partners. Your arts education coordinator knows parents, teaching artists, and school administrators. These aren't cold prospects. They're warm relationships waiting to be activated.
Start here:
Identify program staff who already have strong external relationships and show interest in fundraising. Train them on your organization's case for support, gift policies, and how to have a fundraising conversation. Have development officers shadow program staff in their daily work to understand what they're actually doing. Design solicitation strategies with program staff leading and development staff supporting. Adjust compensation to reflect fundraising contributions and create advancement pathways that reward both program excellence and donor engagement.
The question isn’t whether they can fundraise. The question is: will you let them?
What has your experience been with program staff in fundraising roles? I'd love to hear your thoughts, especially if you disagree with me.
