If you volunteer locally, chances are you have many opportunities to work on small fundraising or grant campaigns. I’ve dabbled in this for years – editing an annual campaign letter, researching grants for my local school, and even writing a few small grants. 

I recently joined the fundraising board for my local library, and I’m learning so much about how endowments work, fundraising-specific CRMs, and general development strategies. And now my historical society has the opportunity to buy a fabulous building – if we raise a lot of money in a few months. So I’ve learned about donation payment processors as well as started to peek behind the curtain for how larger (still small!) donation solicitations happen and how the relationships that lead to asking for money are built. Plus I’m collaborating on fundraising events. As part of it all, I’m wondering how we create sustainable fundraising systems for local organizations to meet on-going needs and increase impact without burning out volunteers. 

Today’s newsletter is inspired by this volunteer activity – I’m going to explore the Fundraising & Development job category, diving into the types of roles I typically post, describing what experience they’re looking for, and then identifying strategies you can use to diversify your own experience if you’re interested in moving into this career path. It’s a good career path for folks who have the relevant skills because 90% of the roles I post are looking for expertise rather than a specific career path or industry.

What are relevant skills in this case? Some of the higher ed admin and non-profit employees in my audience already have extensive, often full-time, experience in this field, but it’s also a great edskip for folks who work in program management or sales and have some fundraising experience on the side (which is where volunteer work can come into play). Depending on the precise mix of responsibilities, some roles are looking for candidates with either fundraising or project management experience so there are multiple pathways to enter into this career. I’ll talk a little later about how to read job descriptions to determine which roles are a good fit for each of these audiences.  

But even if you’re not moving fully into a fundraising & development role, it’s important for anyone interested in working for (edjacent) nonprofits to understand the basics of fundraising – it is the primary way salaries are funded after all. Gaining some volunteer experience with fundraising projects can help you differentiate your application when you apply to non-profit roles, especially for program management or leadership roles. (Sometimes these employees need to create budgets or even write the grants at a smaller organization. Regardless, you’ll frequently liaise with grant writers and development staff so knowing what types of information that you should be collecting during your program evaluation is important. That way a grant writer can write a fantastic grant or provide reports on the impact of your current grant or a large donation to the donors.) 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

What Kinds of Fundraising & Development Jobs Do I Share?
What ‘Relevant Skills’ Should be on my Fundraising & Development Resume?
How Do I Read a Job Description to See if My Skills (Sufficiently) Match?
How Can I Build These Skills in My Current Role or Upskill to Gain New Skills?

The Remainder of this article is for Paid Subscribers. You can subscribe here and access the newsletter archive as well as find jobs at ~500 remote edtech/ed adjacent companies.