Why Your Best Fundraiser Shouldn't Be Your Major Gifts Director

Issue #012

This week's strategic brief (5-minute read)

Your best fundraiser probably shouldn't be your Major Gifts Director.

Here’s why: the skills that close big gifts rarely translate into building high-performing teams. Yet chief fundraisers keep making this mistake. We promote star producers into management because we lack a clear way to separate doers from managers.

The fix is a simple system I now use before every director-level promotion: The Doer vs. Manager Matrix.

The Four Key Differences

1. What Gives Them Energy
   • Doer: Closing their own gifts
   • Manager: Watching their team succeed
2. How They Solve Problems
   • Doer: Jumps in and fixes it
   • Manager: Coaches others to handle it
3. What They Track
   • Doer: Personal pipeline and closes
   • Manager: Team results and system health
4. How They Think
   • Doer: Follows a plan
   • Manager: Builds repeatable systems

Systems Spotlight: The Promotion Check

Before any director-level promotion, score your fundraiser in each area:

Decision Rules:

• 8-12 points: Management ready
• 5-7 points: Develop management skills first
• 4 points or below: Keep as high-performing producer

Ask yourself:

• Can they teach others to do what they do?
• What excites them more—personal wins or team growth?
• Have they ever built a process others could follow?
• Do peers seek their advice?

If you can't answer "yes" to at least three, you have a doer, not a manager.

What This Looks Like in Practice

Last month, I surveyed 8 fellow chief fundraisers about their biggest staffing challenges. Their responses revealed the pattern I'd learned to recognize:

"Having the right staff in place." "Staffing to manage relationships at a more strategic level." "Not having a large enough team."

But here's what the survey also showed: 6 out of 8 chief fundraisers spend 60-80% of their time on day-to-day work instead of big picture leadership.

Why?

Because when we promote doers to management roles, we often lose our best fundraiser and gain our worst manager, pushing us back into staff management instead of strategy.

Red Flags

• They handle donor problems instead of coaching staff
• They’re still making the most donor visits
• Team members bypass them to ask you directly
• They define success by their portfolio, not team growth

Green Lights

• They celebrate team wins over their own
• They’ve built informal systems or training for others
• They ask “How do we scale this?” instead of “How do I close this?”
• They naturally coach peers without being asked

Alternatives to the Automatic Promotion

1: The Specialist Track Create senior roles (Senior Major Gifts Officer, Principal Gifts Officer) with higher compensation but no management responsibility.

2: The Outside Hire Hire a skilled manager from outside and let your top star fundraiser mentor them on your culture and donor relationships.

3: The Growth Path If your top person shows manager potential, give them a 6-month project managing one thing before promoting them fully.

The Bottom Line

My best fundraiser is valuable because she is my best fundraiser. Yours is too. Don’t risk losing that strength and creating a weak manager at the same time.

Instead, build growth paths that honor different strengths and create chances for both doers and managers to shine.

Scale Check

Can your top three fundraisers explain your organization’s strategic goals—without notes? If not, they’re not ready to lead others in strategy.

Coming Next Week

You’ve learned how to spot managers vs. doers. But here’s the next challenge: how do you build systems where your team can make decisions without running to you?

Next Sunday: The Team System That Actually Works — the method that cut my meetings and stopped me from being the decision bottleneck.

Your Turn

Which promotion decision are you wrestling with right now?

• What role are you considering?
• Which of the 4 areas feels hardest to judge?
• What will you do in the next 30 days to test readiness?

Hit reply—I read every response, and your insights often shape future issues.

Until next week,

Christine

P.S. The most successful chief fundraisers I know don’t try to keep top performers from leaving by promoting them into management. They reward brilliance in fundraising roles and invest in leaders who can truly scale teams.

I’m Christine Bork, Chief Development Officer at the American Academy of Pediatrics. I write Chief Fundraiser Weekly to help other fundraising leaders escape the chaos of daily tasks and build high-performing, strategy-first operations.

If you found this helpful, forward it to a peer—it might be the boost they need.