3 Leadership Opportunities to Shape Fundraising Culture
When Anya joined a regional art museum* as its director of development, she came with a strong resumé and genuine enthusiasm for the mission. Operating on a $60 million annual budget, the museum possessed a loyal donor base, growing visitorship, a good reputation in the community, and an ambitious strategic plan that would require a major campaign in the years to come. On paper, everything looked great.
Eleven months later, Anya was quietly seeking a new position.
No one had been unkind or set impossible expectations. What had happened was subtler and harder to name. The executive director, a charismatic figure with deep connections in the philanthropic community, had become the center of gravity for every significant donor relationship, leaving Anya little room to build the kind of connections that sustain a development program. The curatorial staff guarded their donor relationships for their own projects and acquisitions rather than collaborating on them with the development team. When a significant fundraising gap appeared, Anya had a plan, but no internal partners to help her execute. She was talented and committed, but functionally on her own.
Her experience is not unusual. According to industry research, including CompassPoint’s UnderDeveloped — a landmark study of more than 2,700 nonprofits, the average tenure of a development director hovers between 16 and 18 months. The problem is frequently framed as one of compensation or talent pipeline. Jake Muszynski, Principal and Head of Consulting at Creative Fundraising Advisors, sees a deeper current running beneath those explanations. He observes that “the culture of fundraising or ‘culture of philanthropy’ in any organization is almost always a direct expression of how the person at the top understands and relates to philanthropy. That understanding, or the absence of it, radiates into every corner of the organization.”
A culture of philanthropy is an organizational mindset in which philanthropy is woven into the mission, values, and daily work of the institution. It is characterized by shared responsibility, meaningful engagement among donors and stakeholders, and disciplined practices that strengthen relationships, advance the mission, and fuel long-term success. Leaders who do not shape the culture of philanthropy with intention and care risk undermining the very fundraisers who make the organization’s mission possible. The cultural gaps Jake encounters tend to emerge when leaders miss a few key opportunities to determine how fundraising is understood and practiced across the whole organization.
Opportunity #1: Shared Ownership of Fundraising
One of the clearest signals Jake looks for is how the executive director talks about fundraising and who figures in that story. A leader who can speak about philanthropy in the context of programs, board leadership, financial strength, and organizational impact has understood something essential: that fundraising is not any one department’s singular function but a shared organizational responsibility.
A lack of shared ownership can manifest in different ways. In some organizations, a leader has wrapped their identity so tightly around fundraising that the development team has little room to operate. While it may appear that this leader is fundraising successfully, there are risks. Jake observes, “When fundraising becomes one person’s domain, it stops being a culture and starts being tied to a single personality. Personalities are not scalable, and they are not sustainable.”
The opposite extreme is the executive director who steps away from fundraising entirely and assigns it to a department. Fundraising is siloed in these organizations, too. Program staff may see little reason to share stories or donor connections, and board members may take their cues from leadership and conclude that fundraising belongs to a department and has little to do with them. Donors may build relationships with fundraisers, but they receive little evidence that philanthropy is valued across the institution. The result is a weakened fundraising program that is fundamentally disconnected from the mission it exists to support.
Opportunity #2: Donor Relationships That Belong to the Institution
Closely related to shared ownership is how leaders manage their relationships with individual donors. Many executive directors, particularly those who have been with an organization for a long time, have cultivated deep personal connections with its most significant supporters. Those relationships are genuine and valuable. The challenge arises when a leader becomes the sole bridge between the organization and the people who support it. Jake encourages organizations to give their most important donors more than one point of contact: “a donor who knows only the executive director has a relationship with a person. A donor who also knows the development director and a program lead has a relationship with the institution itself, one that does not depend on any single individual remaining in place.” A major donor who has met a curator or attended a behind-the-scenes preview has more reasons to stay invested than one whose entire connection runs through the executive director’s office.
Opportunity #3: Transparency That Equips Rather Than Overwhelms
The third area where leadership shapes fundraising culture is in how honestly and how helpfully leaders communicate about organizational challenges. Jake is a genuine advocate for transparency and believes executive directors should be clear with their teams about financial realities. What he cautions against is a version of openness that functions more as a transfer of pressure than genuine communication. Telling a development director that a significant budget gap needs to be closed by year’s end is not leadership; it is delegating a problem. Jake says: “The most effective leaders share the hard truths and then immediately ask, ‘What do you need from me to be successful?’ That single question changes the entire nature of the conversation.” The executive director who names the challenge, asks what support would help, and commits to being part of the solution has done something fundamentally different. That shift can help to keep talented fundraisers from seeking employment elsewhere.
The Questions Worth Sitting With
Anya was not let down by any single failure of leadership. She was let down by institutional norms and assumptions that had drifted, gradually and unintentionally, away from the best practices that create a healthy fundraising culture. Jake has found that the most useful thing he can offer leaders willing to examine these dynamics is two questions:
- Do you truly understand how fundraising touches every part of your organization?
- How are you empowering the people around you to be part of that work?
An honest look at the answers to these questions can breathe new life into an organization’s fundraising culture. The leader who establishes a healthy culture has a better shot at retaining the institutional knowledge accrued by valued employees and securing the resources and relationships needed to fuel the mission over the long term.
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Every leader influences their fundraising culture, whether intentionally or not. If you are wondering whether yours is working the way you hope, CFA’s Development Assessment offers a compassionate and clear-eyed look at the structures, relationships, and culture shaping your philanthropic work. Contact CFA today to start that conversation.
*Disclaimer: Client confidentiality is paramount in our work with each and every organization. The story in this article is fiction, based on real situations drawn from CFA’s broad experience serving nonprofit organizations.