Seeking dynamic, mission-driven Development Director to manage a $2 million fundraising portfolio, write 75 grant proposals and reports annually, oversee individual giving, cultivate major donors, plan our annual gala, supervise social media, produce our newsletter, manage Salesforce, create the annual report, oversee volunteers, and support the Board Development Committee.
Must be a strategic thinker AND detail-oriented; a self-starter AND collaborative team player; able to work independently AND manage multiple stakeholders in a fast-paced environment. Must possess exceptional writing, public speaking, graphic design, database management, event planning, relationship-building, budgeting, and project management skills. Evening and weekend availability required.
Must be able to cultivate six-figure donors, troubleshoot Salesforce, produce flawless graphics in Canva, write winning federal grants, increase individual giving by 40%, fix the printer, and locate the missing extension cord five minutes before the board meeting.
Salary: $52,000.
We’re looking for a rock star!
No, you’re not looking for a rock star. You’re looking for a unicorn.
I’ve seen variations of this job description more times than I can count during my decades working in the nonprofit sector. Sometimes I read a nonprofit job posting and wonder: How many people are you actually trying to hire here?
How Did We Get Here?
To be fair, I understand how nonprofit unicorn jobs happen.
Nonprofits have limited resources. They want as much of their funding as possible to go toward fulfilling their missions. A small organization may genuinely only have enough money to hire one development person, even though it needs to raise money from foundations, individuals, events, corporations, and government sources.
So, yes, people who work at nonprofits often wear multiple hats. That’s not inherently a bad thing. In fact, it can make nonprofit work interesting! I’ve learned all sorts of things over the years because I was willing to venture outside my official job description. The problem is when “wearing multiple hats” becomes “wearing every hat in the building.”
A Talented Employee Can Hide a Badly Designed Job
Here’s the tricky part: Sometimes you actually find the unicorn.
You hire someone who is remarkably efficient. They’re a great writer. They understand fundraising strategy. They can build relationships with donors. They’re organized. They figure out the database. They create pretty good graphics. They pull off the gala. They know which board member needs an extra reminder before every meeting. And because they’re so capable, the organization concludes that the job is working.
But maybe the job isn’t working. Maybe the employee is.
Maybe that person is working nights and weekends to keep up. Maybe they’re not taking vacation. Maybe they’re constantly shifting from strategic work to administrative work and back again. Maybe the organization isn’t getting the best of their talents because they’re spending Tuesday afternoon trying to fix the email template and Wednesday morning figuring out why the printer won’t connect to the Wi-Fi.
This connects directly to something I’ve written about before: nonprofit organizations have a bad habit of rewarding heroics. We celebrate the person who swoops in, works until midnight, solves the crisis, and saves the day. But if a position regularly requires heroic effort just to accomplish the basic responsibilities of the job, that’s not evidence of an extraordinary employee. That’s evidence of a poorly designed job.
“Other Duties as Assigned” Is Doing a LOT of Heavy Lifting
Ah, “other duties as assigned.”
They make perfect sense in a job description. Every workplace has unexpected needs, and no job description can anticipate every single task someone might occasionally be asked to do. But “other duties as assigned” shouldn’t mean: Plus anything else anyone happens to think of.
If your Development Director is writing grants, managing major gifts, running events, creating social media content, updating the website, managing the CRM, recruiting volunteers, staffing three board committees, ordering the catering, designing the annual report, and fixing the office printer because “Lauren knows how it works,” you haven’t created a flexible position. You’ve created a junk drawer.
The Unicorn Problem Isn’t Just About Burnout
It’s easy to frame this as an employee wellness issue, and it absolutely is one. I’ve written before about passion exploitation — the expectation that nonprofit employees should tolerate unreasonable workloads, hours, wages, or working conditions because they care deeply about the mission. But badly designed jobs aren’t only bad for employees. They’re bad for organizations.
Think about that Development Director again. If she’s spending hours every week on tasks that someone else could do, what isn’t she doing? Maybe she’s not meeting with donors, or identifying major gift prospects, or developing a strategy to retain donors, or building relationships with foundation officers.
Maybe she’s not thinking.
If someone’s entire workday is consumed by completing tasks and responding to whatever is most urgent at that moment, when exactly are they supposed to do the higher-level thinking you hired them to do?
Stop Looking for Unicorns. Start Designing Doable Jobs.
This doesn’t mean every small nonprofit suddenly needs to hire five new employees. For many organizations, that’s financially impossible. But it does mean nonprofit leaders and boards need to get more realistic about what one human being can manage. Start with a few questions:
What are the three or four most important things this person needs to accomplish? Not the 27 things it would be lovely if they could do. What are the responsibilities that are central to this position and to the organization’s success?
What requires this person’s particular expertise? If you’ve hired an experienced fundraiser, how much of their time is actually spent fundraising?
What can someone else do? Could administrative staff take on some tasks? Could board members or volunteers appropriately help with others?
What could you outsource? Graphic design, bookkeeping, database cleanup, grant research, event logistics, IT support, and other functions don’t necessarily need to live inside one employee’s job description.
What could you just stop doing?
Not every event needs to continue forever. You don’t necessarily need to be active on six social media platforms. You don’t need to pursue every grant. Every report doesn’t need to be 25 pages long. Every committee doesn’t need to exist until the end of time. Sometimes the answer isn’t finding someone who can do more. It’s deciding to do less.
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