Are fundraising professionals being ruthless advocates for themselves?

It seems a lot of us are thinking about career changes lately; and my conversation today with Kristi begs the question of whether fundraisers are, to use her words, being ruthless advocates for themselves. Kristi started our conversation with the topic of adequate compensation; however, as I shared with her, I remain skeptical that compensation alone in our space is the real challenge. Regardless, Kristi insists that the next generation of fundraising professionals must keep reading; keep experimenting with new ideas; and, when it comes to adequate compensation and benefits, keep brining it up!

Among the many compensation and career development questions that we contemplated today was whether fundraising as a career path has a tendency to plateau and inevitably leave us looking for something else. Why is it that after a decade or so, so many of us are looking for opportunities that our employers can’t offer? As I shared with Kristi, I have often wondered how many of our challenges in the sector would remedy themselves if more of us never confined our careers aspirations to fundraising in the first place and instead aspired to be “fundraising CEO’s” who are as confident and capable of ensuring mission delivery as they are mission advancement.

As always, we are especially grateful to our friends at CueBack for sponsoring The Fundraising Talent Podcast. If you’d like to learn more about hosting the Responsive Fundraising roadshow in your local community, email me for more information. And, if you’d like to download Responsive’s latest edition of Carefully & Critically, just click here.