How to separate your personal & professional value from the funds you raise as a fundraiser of color

By Courtland J. Powers-Gunnells, a social impact executive leader and fundraiser, with over a decade of experience transforming nonprofits into thriving organizations.

What I realized was that I needed to communicate my impact differently. In my portfolio, I began telling the story of how my approach to fundraising centered on what organizations needed most.

I remember when I decided to take the leap into the fundraising profession after having spent a few years in corporate america, focusing on finance and organizational development. I started off working primarily for grassroots organizations with budgets that ranged from $250K-$750K. By mid-career, I had moved to organizations with generally healthy budgets ($1-$1.5M), and then to those who are of the 14 percent with budgets over $5 million. 

I’m proud of the diversity of experience I have, but when I reflect on that journey, I don’t always feel as though organizations would have been as impressed with what I accomplished had I not promoted my value in different ways. 

I found myself being overlooked for many fundraising opportunities over the years because I had not raised a certain amount of funds, although I brought a lot to the table and honed best practices within the field, working with what I had. This made me begin to doubt my value and even what were (and still are) successes in those early years working for grassroots organizations. 

Why we need to separate our value from the funds we raise

Over time, I began to correlate my personal and professional value to the funds I raised. It was discouraging. It’s difficult to navigate those realities, coupled with being the only fundraiser of color in most of the spaces I needed to navigate. 

What I realized was that I needed to communicate my impact differently. In my portfolio, I began telling the story of how my approach to fundraising centered on what organizations needed most. I’ve learned over the years, many nonprofits approach fundraising outputs and outcomes with what they’d like to see, which creates an overwhelming pressure to generate revenue. Through this observation, I created a true understanding of feasibility–which helped recenter the organizations I work with on goals that are realistic, ambitious, and informed. 

One of the primary ways I see organizations navigate this “idealistic” reality is in how they recruit and hire fundraisers with preferences and expectations that can be overly ambitious or unrealistic for their particular operation. For example, I think about preferences like experience raising high six-figure major gifts with a minimum requirement of five years in the field. This makes me wonder how many people are raising individual and major gifts at that level during what is considered early years of a fundraising career, and how are they getting into roles that are preparing them for portfolios at that stage? 

This assumption of what a “successful fundraiser” looks like has become a normalized practice, causing fundraisers to assess themselves by these standards. It sets a tone for how organizations value performance in the field. This valuation system can center privilege and as a result, fundraisers of color can be disproportionately impacted – unintentionally valuing themselves and their potential based on desires of organizations that aren’t rooted in or considering lived experience, other professional experience, or even best practice. Impacts of this valuation system can result in the continued turnover rate (18-24 months) of fundraisers. 

Patterns I experienced as a Black woman in fundraising

I originally began my career in business operations and finance so when I transitioned into the nonprofit field and found my calling in fundraising, I had some experience to leverage, but I also found it difficult to be selected for roles that included that criteria…particularly as a Black woman fundraiser. I realized some patterns and truths about what I experienced while attempting to journey through building a career in fundraising:

Being a Black woman in this profession proved to be difficult early on: I had counterparts who didn’t indicate or personify the skillsets, experience, or education I had, but were selected to serve in roles I was more qualified to do (based on the job description). This was due to a number of factors including: (1) they knew someone, (2) they were a relative of someone, or (3) they were in a previous role that tasked them with working within an established portfolio that reflected the outcomes the organization wanted to attract and recruit, or they were perceived to “fit in” with the organization’s culture. This is why I appreciate the organizations that were small, inclusive, and took a chance on me. That takes me into my next point…

Experience being “scrappy” counts for a lot: While organizations are clearly attempting to set themselves up for success, many times, because they don’t understand their own feasibility, they can recruit someone that looks good on paper but may not have the experience or skillset it may take to build on what’s needed. They’re good if there is a portfolio that’s been scrubbed or a grants pipeline that’s already been put together, but if you’re looking for someone who can dive deeper and build something informed by your organization’s data and performance, they will struggle. 

Those grassroots organizations I worked for may not have had the large budget, but that’s what helped me learn how to be resourceful and deliberate in building fundraising budgets and development plans with little to work with. I’m not saying that’s the experience we want for fundraisers in this work, holistically, but that experience (even for a short time) is valuable and should be treated as such by larger, more well-resourced organizations. 

Continuing education gave me the confidence boost I needed: I am a lifelong learner and I enjoy learning new ways of approaching concepts, theories, etc. Investing in myself by participating in continuing education through the local center for nonprofits, nonprofit association office, fundraising professional association, or university, gave me what I needed to build a unique portfolio for myself. It also allowed me to challenge myself to take on new projects to learn what worked well and what didn’t. It helped me establish a basis of knowledge on best practice and understand what that looked like across differently-sized organizations. 

All of these experiences allowed me to be intentional about how I boosted my value. They also helped me recognize that what I raised over my career didn’t need to define my value but complimented it. 

Questions to help you identify your unique value adds

While mentoring other fundraisers of color, I hear my story echoed in their experiences. 

Now, I focus on encouraging and mentoring other fundraisers of color to identify the unique value add they bring to the work that compliments their portfolio, while also tying it to fundraising outcomes that are meaningful. Some questions I start with are:

• Are you good at finding the gaps in program delivery? Can you easily point to outputs that focus too heavily on specific implementation and adherence? Do you have strengths in identifying outcomes that take a more comprehensive approach to the logic model and connecting them to the long-term financial sustainability of the organization?
• Did you build a strong capacity for fundraising operations? Do you get to clarity about what an organization is missing quickly? Are you able to identify solutions that not only streamline fundraising systems and stewardship of donors, but also contribute to a healthy, balanced budget? 
• Are you really great at connecting donors to a mission as a newbie? Do you quickly develop a process for understanding how to talk about key mission moments? Do you take initiative when it comes to understanding what relationships look like? 
• Are you really good at cross-functional collaboration that results in consistent data/narrative? Do you focus on establishing healthy collaborative relationships with program staff to ensure a break-down of silos, access to ongoing data, changes, and pivots in the work?

Whatever it is that uniquely positions you, lead with that value add to tell the story of your true impact on organizations. Honing this part of your story is how you ensure you separate your value from what you raise throughout your career. 

It certainly helped me frame my experience and impact in a way that organizations understood my value early on in conversations and quickly after I began work with them. I’ve also found it to be helpful to frame your experience into data points that are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) but tell the whole story of your impact. For example: 

Instead of saying: 
I led the effort in raising $50,000 for last year’s annual fundraiser, $20,000 more than the year prior

You can say: 
I led the effort in increasing our annual fundraising event outcomes by 66 percent. We surpassed our budgeted goal, and this created a better opportunity for leadership to build capacity and explore additional ways we can support program expansion.

If you want to highlight your ability to quickly adapt:
I led the effort in increasing our annual fundraising event outcomes by 66 percent as a newly hired fundraiser with six months to prepare and plan. We surpassed our budgeted goal, and this created a better opportunity for leadership to build capacity and explore additional ways we can support program expansion.

Adopting some of these narratives to frame my impact certainly helped me grow in the field. 

I’m very proud of the professional performance I’ve reached thus far (having raised in the millions now). I also still heavily value the qualitative, scrappy, resourceful values that fundraisers bring to this work every day…even if it doesn’t result in a large portfolio. I enjoy fundraisers who value continuous learning and strategic thinking whether they have a budget of $10,000 or $100,000. 

Sustainability and retention within the fundraising profession doesn’t holistically go beyond professional performance, but it doesn’t mean we can’t get there. The larger sector and profession has to adopt values that go beyond understanding and executing the work of a fundraiser. We have to focus on the experiences we have navigating this work, and that starts with recognizing that the way we see ourselves cannot be determined by the amount of funds we raise for organizations.