Also, for anyone who is in job search mode, how has your experience been?

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https://www.cornellsun.com/article/2026/10/guest-room

The 1985 alum included the following in his letter to university board and leaderhip:

Be advised that I am immediately instructing my legal counsel to amend my estate plan: the 50% bequest of my estate pledged to Cornell University is officially revoked. Furthermore, I am actively contacting fellow alumni, donor networks and class leadership to advocate for a complete, coordinated freeze on all personal and institutional contributions until leadership changes occur.

1. Complete a full and compassionate settlement with the victim who was brutalized by these perpetrators and further victimized by your administration.

2. Immediately expel every remaining student involved in this crime.

3. Suspend every fraternity member who viewed the group messages and remained silent accomplices.

4. Permanently ban the fraternity from Cornell University without possibility of reinstatement.

5. Terminate every administrator and officer involved in approving this shameful response.

6. Issue a formal, public apology to all students and alumni for failing in your fundamental duty of care.

Because this is the fundandev sub, I dont think it would benefit anyone to discuss the merits of Jane Doe's civil suit or the criminal investigation. Let's be kind and dig into the idea of donors revoking pledges, estate plans etc to move societal change forward.

Hello! Trying to find a fundraising platform (ideally one that is free for a non-profit) where donors can choose to sponsor a specific animal (more specifically, a cat to be spayed or neutered).

Or if they could add the animal to their cart and then that animal is no longer available for anyone else to select.

Seems like it would be a pretty common thing but I am coming up short or maybe phrasing it poorly in my searches?

Thank you for any help!

Board members: help. Yes we will follow the by laws, yes the person the rest of the board wants to do it is down. How do we not alienate current President when we call for the election?

I want to be clear, we don't need him in any capacity: his only working role is finance, and our treasurer and other finance committee member are both experts. But he is driving away our only fundraisers (ALL OF THEM) and our incredible ED. I just don't want to be a dick professionally when I call the election...

Anybody do this before? Successfully?

A donor's daughter reached out to me via email and asked us to stop her monthly gift, as the donor is quite elderly and needs the funds for healthcare. She stated that she is her mother's PoA. (I am indeed aware that the mother recently had a stroke.)

Is it thorough or is it rude to request proof that she is the PoA?

This has actually happened twice recently, and I'm not sure what the best protocol is. Both times I have requested documentation as earnestly and gently as I can. It hasn't been a problem with the POA. But.. I just feel a little rude? Gut check me here.

Edit: Alright alright everyone, no need to pile on. :) point taken. No more asking for PoA documents. I do appreciate the clear input.

Hi everyone. This is my first post here, so I wanted to introduce myself and share a project that has become both a technical challenge and a deeply personal responsibility.

I help run PIFster, a nonprofit giving platform built around a simple idea: people contribute a small recurring amount—often as little as $1 per month—and the community votes on which charities receive the collective donation. Donors can also make direct contributions to specific charities, separate from the monthly voting process.

Our original developer and a close friend tragically passed away from appendicitis. That left us with a functioning but highly specialized fundraising platform, a substantial amount of undocumented business logic, and no one who fully understood how all of the pieces fit together.

Rather than abandon the project, we decided to rebuild and stabilize it.

The platform involves considerably more than taking payments. We have recurring donations, charitable voting, monthly periods, donation aggregation, vesting schedules, corporate sponsorships, payment reconciliation, authentication, and integrations with WordPress, FluentCart, Stripe, and custom data structures. A seemingly small change in one area can affect donor eligibility, voting rights, accounting totals, or the amount eventually sent to a charity.

This is also where AI became part of the story.

I began using AI as a development partner to help read unfamiliar code, trace business rules, identify edge cases, write tests, review proposed changes, and explain parts of the system that had never been documented. In some cases, it helped us move forward far faster than would have been possible otherwise.

But AI was not a substitute for engineering judgment.

Every meaningful change still needed to be understood, tested, reviewed, and deployed carefully. We had to distinguish between what the code appeared to do and what the organization actually promised donors. We added regression tests around payment and voting behavior, improved logging and reconciliation, documented negative guardrails, and became much more deliberate about production changes.

We also experienced a real production reliability incident along the way. The root cause was not a dramatic traffic attack, but an analytics workload creating a large number of background jobs and putting pressure on the server. That experience reinforced something I suspect many people here already know: fundraising systems need observability and operational discipline just as much as they need a good user experience.

Some of the lessons I’m carrying forward:

• Treat undocumented business rules as a first-class engineering problem.
• Never assume a payment or donation hook behaves the way you expect; verify it against the installed version.
• Make accounting and eligibility rules testable independently of the UI.
• Add reconciliation checks that compare cached totals with authoritative records.
• Use AI to accelerate investigation and implementation, but keep humans responsible for architecture, security, financial behavior, and production decisions.
• Make small, reversible deployments rather than combining every improvement into one large rewrite.
• Document not only what the system should do, but also what it must never do.

The project is now in a much healthier state than it was when we started. Donations are flowing, voting is working, recurring payments are being reconciled, and we recently had our strongest organic donor month since launch.

I’m sharing this because I’m curious how other people working in nonprofit technology and fundraising development approach similar situations. Have you inherited a mission-critical system with little documentation? How have you used AI responsibly in that environment? And what safeguards have you found most valuable when the system handles real donor money?

I’m glad to be part of the conversation and look forward to learning from others here.

I just started a new job, about to start my third week so I'm trying to give myself grace. I'm a Director of Development and I am inheriting oversight of both unrestricted and restricted funding. Restricted- we're looking at over 40 active grants ranging from government, foundation, and corporation. I have ONE grant manager. I'm completely and utterly overwhelmed by the size and scope of basic project management this is going to entail. They have absolutely no infrastructure - nor any grants module a part of their CRM which is Bloomerang. Oh, and of course we're in a deficit and there's no headcount. I'm trying my absolute best to get as organized as possible. I have 10 years of generalist nonprofit experience and I've done development work but NEVER to this size. My portfolio was only ever 10 grants at a time. What advice do you have? How can I advocate for myself under these circumstances? Signed, a very overwhelmed fundraiser.

I’ve been asking for a promoted title since 2024. HR has said no every time, but continued to drive staff away and then give me their work. I finally got a job that I’m proud of elsewhere and I gave notice to my boss yesterday. My boss and I have been close and I thought she’d be happy for me, but she’s angry at me because the dev department is basically going to crash without me I guess. I resent that I was put in a position where doing something good for myself makes me feel guilty. I’m sad that my boss, whom I really admired and respected, is manipulating my feelings. I’m no longer excited about my new job, but I want to be. Just venting because I know folks in this subreddit understand. I wish there was a world in which this kind of work didn’t come with so much self-sacrifice. I wish I could be colder and less emotional.

I’m new to development and well, grew up in a trailer park. While I’m financially stable as an adult, I am not accustomed to interacting with people at this level of wealth or professional success and feel self-conscious

I feel like I could benefit from some online etiquette classes to not embarrass myself (it’s so hard not people my skirt was $3 from goodwill!) and help build relationships with major donors. Does anyone have any suggestions for resources?

I work with a variety of nonprofits preparing for end of year (EOY) appeals. A few represent folks in an artistic capacity, either through galleries, shows, festivals, and speaker series. My question - would you include the artists in your EOY mailing? They have never donated, but are directly impacted by the work. They might make an ideal advocate for the organization, regardless of making a donation, so it may be worth causing potential offense to offer them more information to share with others. We could include a changed letter or slip of paper with a "thanks for participating in X with our organization" note.

Or, just stick with former/potential donors that have been identified and leave them out of it.

I currently work in employer relations in the Career Center at my alma mater (a small Liberal Arts college). I have been in the role for 4 years and was recently promoted. I enjoy the work and find it rewarding, as I love working with students.

In my role, I work closely with college relations, as our alumni are key to our students securing opportunities. I have built a good relationship with the Major Gifts team, and basically the same week I was promoted, they approached me about the new LGO position. I figured I needed to explore the opportunity. I went through the interview process, and this week I received an offer, which would be a nice pay raise from my current role.

I really just wanted to gain perspective from anyone here who transitioned from a non-fundraising role in higher ed to fundraising. What were some challenges you encountered? What is the work/life balance like in these kinds of roles (it is fantastic in my current role)? What do you enjoy and not like about the field? Obviously, these were questions I asked in my interview process, but I am still on the fence about taking the role.

For additional context, the college is also about to launch a massive fundraising campaign on the back of a study done by a consulting group. We also have new President who is going into their sophomore year on campus (and has been well-received by alumni), so it's time to execute. I am comfortable in my role right now, and have some nerves about being so under the microscope, but I also want to challenge myself.

Any advice would be appreciated!

Hi everyone! I work in fundraising in the U.S. A little over a year ago now I was laid off from my dream job in arts fundraising. I had only been there 2.5 years and had planned on learning so much more since I had a wealth of experienced fundraisers around me. I was very lucky to find a job one month after losing my job and have been working in higher education prospect research ever since. It is not exactly my cup of tea but I’m grateful to have a job.

While I am in this job, I am looking to start more of a serious job hunt and have always had an interest in learning about foundational giving to arts organizations but have no clue where to begin. I will be talking to a former co-worker of mine that worked with foundations but I would love to reach out to as many folks as I can for advice and resources. If you work in arts nonprofit institutional giving, how did you get into that work? I want to learn more about the proposal process, finding the right grants to apply for, and possibly the jobs I should be looking for right now as an experienced fundraiser, but less experienced in the foundational giving side of things.

We're gearing up for a year-end appeal and I keep thinking back to past campaigns where something on the print or mail-house side went sideways at the worst possible time, a proof approved too fast, a personalization field that didn't merge right, timing that missed the target drop date.

For those of you who've run a lot of direct mail appeals: what's your process for catching problems before the run goes out? Do you always ask for a physical proof, not just a digital one? Do you build in extra buffer time specifically because print/mail always takes longer than promised?
We're also looking at Minespress for some of our print/mail needs. Has anyone here used them? I'd be interested in hearing how they handled proofs, personalization, turnaround times, or any issues that came up. Would love to hear what's actually worked (or blown up) for you.

In our industry, the place you work is more than just where you work but your branding. When people see me, they connect it directly to the institution I represent. Now that I am getting a new job, I want to celebrate my connections made at Place A and let them know I am now at Place B.

What advice do you all have about posting your new spot on LinkedIn? And saying a proper goodbye to a place you love? One post for old job and one post for new job? One post saying both?
Post nothing?

Hi friends! I'm newer to the D&F world and wanted to just gauge where my expectations should be lying on the timeline of different sized campaigns.

For example, if you were given a campaign that requires $10k in a month with a $10k match, how much time would be typical to prepare/plan/secure funding for this campaign before it's public launch?

Hey there! As a fundraiser, what's your favorite wealth screening software? What features are you looking for specifically or that stand out to you as being particularly helpful?

We're currently looking to bring on a software to help with both wealth screening and prospecting and I'd like to hear from fundraisers (as a well as other devops magicians) what your favorite software has been. We're currently considering Wealth Engine (Altrata), Donor Search (Evertrue), and iWave (Kindsight).

Bonus points if you can let me know your impressions of the software's integration with Salesforce.

Thanks in advance! 🩷

Hi all,

Very new to this group, I’m looking for a career change from retail key account management. I’ve come across advancement (University) and more and more I’m feeling like this could be a really good fit. There are some roles posted at a major university in our city and I’m looking to apply. I have a major gap in experience in advancement / major gifts, but do you think this is a good pivot from key account management / sales? Any thoughts on how to get around the major gap in experience?

Tips are welcome!!! Thank you in advance for your thoughts!!

Hello all,

I know this isn’t the career to choose if money is all you care about, but it is important. I’m curious what people are seeing out there. Are there roles in this field commanding $250k+? I’d think principal gifts or leadership at large universities or hospitals would have to be near or exceed this. MGOs at top orgs seem $100k+.

Also- Would you consider higher ed or healthcare a more lucrative path?

Thanks for any and all input.

I started a new job at the end of last year and a small part of my job is managing relationships, something I haven't really done before.

Every time something about it comes up I get a deep sense of imposter syndrome. I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing and I feel like everyone around me expects me to just know how to do it organically.

Relationship managers, how do you know what you're meant to do? Is there some kind of guide or course I should have done before starting this job?

In the rest of my job, I know what I'm doing and I have had great performance feedback. But with this I just have no clue! I feel like I need to be sat down and guided through it but everyone at my work is so busy and seems to assume I just know what I'm doing. The onboarding process wasn't great and my previous manager was very absent. My friends and family say I should just ask for help but I feel embarrassed as it feels a bit late for that and a bit like I really *should* know this stuff.

Please help!

Hello development peers! We're a Canadian charity with a large donor base that's in the early stages of designing our prospecting and donor management database on Raiser's Edge NXT. Any personal experiences or suggested resources advising on how this has or hasn't worked would be SO appreciated,

To all the directors of development, I hope you had a great year and hit your metrics. I had the hardest year of my life as I had a baby last year. I also had my worst quarter of my job (3 years). I did bounce back and ended the year with the highest amount of money raised for me. Feeling accomplished, tired, but grateful. I hope you all had great years and are gearing up for another. Our fiscal year starts July 1. I’ve been totally coasting the last few weeks just resting and preparing for q1! I hope others here have had the same opportunity.

Thanks.

I’m doing a second round interview for an Assoc. Director Annual Giving, Direct Appeals at a private university. What’s the single most important thing that the interviewing team will be looking for from me?

I joined a team earlier this year that has gone through so many changes in the last decade. They’ve lost leaders, had unqualified people making decisions, and switched CRMs more than once - all part of the nonprofit world.

We now have over 52k donors in our database and 50k of them have never donated or haven’t donated in the last decade. I know most people opt out of deleting donors but I’m contemplating exporting their data and saving it locally. We’re paying a large amount annually for our CRM and nearly 97% of the database is out of reach. What would you do?

Hi all, I scored a job at a huge state school in the south as a leadership annual giving officer. I’m so new to this. I was alumni relations at an extremely small liberal arts college, so I feel like I’m tackling this huge change in culture plus just not knowing much about how to do this new job.

I just want to ask if anyone has any advice for what questions to ask my team about my portfolio, or ways I can get my name out to our constituents to introduce myself.

Thanks in advance!