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You're listening to the number one podcast for nonprofit leaders getting your nonprofit fully funded. This is the Fundraising Masterminds podcast.
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It really has to do with high control. They can't hand off because they don't trust someone. You've got ministry leaders that say, I'm the only one that can have a relationship.
A
I don't do it. It doesn't get done.
B
So as a result, they end up killing themselves because they are the only one.
A
You can't run an organization that. Welcome back to the Fundraising Masterminds Podcast. My name is Jason Galasinski, and with me, my co host, Jim Dempsey. Hi, Jason and Jim. We're going to be actually continuing kind of like this series that we started. It's kind of an ongoing series called Development 101.
B
Right.
A
And every once in a while, we do a podcast episode that is kind of related to the fundamentals of development.
B
Right.
A
And we call that development 101. And we kind of stick the episode in a little playlist. So if you're just coming in randomly found us in the inner web somewhere, then you might want to click into the Development 101 playlist and go back to the very beginning, because we talk about a lot of different fundamental principles of development. But on this episode, what we are really going to be talking about is how to scale major donor development efforts without sacrificing the relationship.
B
Right.
A
Can you unpack this scenario for me of, like, how this happens?
B
Well, absolutely. Well, you know, you. There's a point in the growth of any organization where you believe you need to grow and move faster, and that is important. I mean, certainly scaling up your major donor effort is great. The problem and the risk that exists is that you grow so fast that you start to ignore those important relationships. That was the. Were they. Those were the foundation of why your organization exists and why it started in the first place.
A
Right. Well, because at the beginning, you know, it's just you and a handful of people.
B
Right.
A
And then, you know, as time goes on.
B
Yep.
A
You know, those people feel connected to you and things like that. But then, you know, if all of a sudden you hire a bunch of new people and you're trying to, you know, streamline things, then people can start to feel like, oh, Jason doesn't care about me as much as he used to.
B
Yeah. Well, you and I were talk recently about a colleague that we worked with that had a ministry in Chicago, and he had grown the ministry so far. The major donors just loved him. He spent time. You even used a great analogy that he would go out to lunch and come back with $50,000 checks. But then he hired a development director and just hoped that he could just turn the relationships over to the development director. And it didn't happen. I mean, people didn't want to meet with him. He didn't have the same depth of a relationship that the executive director had. And everything changed, frankly. And unfortunately, the executive director had to let the development director go because just didn't develop the way he wanted. So. Yeah. Yeah.
A
Well, every business owner knows you can't grow an organization by yourself. You got to surround yourself with great people.
B
Yeah.
A
And you got to build a team and you got to start working on the business, not in the business.
B
That's right.
A
Right.
B
And it's.
A
But it's hard because usually the business owner is the most passionate, you know, wants to be in the business, you know, being a part of everything.
B
So. Well, I think back about, back to scripture, back to the Old Testament. If you remember when Moses led the Israelites into the desert, he was making decisions. He essentially was a judge himself. And it became so enormous of a task that his father in law, Jethro, had to come up and say, enough is enough. You're going to kill yourself. You've got to distribute that around in. With other people.
A
Well, I had a friend of mine who started a juice business. Okay. And this is kind of an interesting story, but, you know, it started off with just, you know, him and some of his kids working with him, and they had a very good business, you know, good product. It was a good product, you know, and there was a demand for it, you know, in town, you know, they were charging, you know, I think $5 or $6 for a cup of juice, you know, for. But it was freshly squeezed. So they would go and they would buy all organic, you know, vegetables, and they'd have all these recipes that they had put together. And um, and anyways, bottom line is, is that the business had a lot of potential to grow.
B
Right.
A
But it couldn't get past. They, they couldn't get past just family members just doing everything themselves. They, they just really were stuck in. We got to do everything and you know, you know, finding good people, trusting people, getting it all to work, building a system.
B
Right, right.
A
Like, it just, it just didn't, it didn't go beyond, you know, three people. And those three people were the same people, you know, doing accounting, paying taxes, going to the grocery store, mixing, you know, being there for the customer, you know, like. And it just doesn't, doesn't scale.
B
Right.
A
You know, like.
B
Right, right.
A
And so I remember talking to him about this. This was several years ago, and just saying, you got to focus working on the business, but you're the business owner, you know, do you, Jim, what McDonald's have you walked into recently where you see the owner of the McDonald's working the cash bar?
B
Yeah.
A
You know, or whatever. They're not there.
B
Usually. They would kill them if they had to work.
A
Well, there might be, like eight hours. There might be a general manager there. But, like, typically, the owner is behind the scenes. You don't even know who they are. Right. And they hire everything. Right. And they're. They're focused on the strategy of the business. They're focused on, you know, how do I, you know, fill the roles, you know, who do I need to be managing the store, you know, who. Who all the hours. And, you know, so they're. They're making sure everything is coming together and working out. And they're also, you know, doing payroll and running. You know, I don't exactly know how all the details of. I'm probably getting this all wrong because I have no idea how McDonald's works. But I'm just saying, usually, you know, when you go into your local coffee shop or you go into a restaurant, you don't see the owner right in the. In the kitchen, you know, making everything. He's. He's hired everybody, and everybody is there, is hired. But then a really well organized restaurant has, you know, everyone knows what they need to do. Everyone has a job. Everyone has, you know, you got people that only wipe tables, and you got people who only seat people. You know, you got people in the back who are just doing dishes, and you got people who are cooking food, you know, and everyone has a role. And so that system is what we call a business. Yeah, right. It's a operational plan for how to make money and create jobs and all that stuff. So it's the same thing with a nonprofit. That's my point. This isn't a episode about how to run a business, but my point is that a nonprofit needs to run in the same way. You need to have the same mindset as a business. Because so many people, when they run a nonprofit, they just kind of treat it like a ministry. Meaning that, you know, one passionate person is doing everything, you know, and he's like, giving of himself, you know, that's what I mean. And, you know.
B
Well, no, a lot of times I see it. It really has to do with high control, Jason. That's what it Seems to be if you got a business owner who needs to be there, you know, 14, 15 hours a day behind the counter, chances are they can't hand off because they don't trust someone. Exactly. And actually that happens a lot with a lot of ministries is that you've got ministry that say, I'm the only one that can have a relationship.
A
I don't do it right.
B
Or the I'm the only one who can have a relationship with this major donor. They only like me. So as a result, they end up killing themselves because they are the only one. And we find that successful organizations work best when people have multiple relationships with major donors. One of the things that I do as a leader in development is I introduce people that work with me to our major donors so we can have multiple relationships. Because if someone gets upset with me, they stop giving to the organization. If they've got multiple relationships, will they say, okay, well, I'm frustrated with Jim, but I love crew, and a lot of that is because they've got friends they know in crew and they know the crew is solid, even though they're frustrated with Jim.
A
Yeah. You know, as the organization is starting to scale.
B
Right, right.
A
And you're getting to that next growth, maybe you took the perfect vision dinner. You raised your first hundred thousand, and it's like, wow, now we need to hire more people. Now we need to, you know, and so things just get busier.
B
Right.
A
It's easy for the executive director to still function the way he was functioning when it was small, but you really have to pivot to the executive director starting to kind of take a step out of the day to day and start thinking, like, I need to be creating systems and processes, which might be a little different than what you've been doing. But you're, you're building a team. You're. You're equipping, you know, your team so that they have structure and order and things like that. And then also the executive director needs to be along those lines with the systems they need to be focused on how do I build a system of doing development, you know, because the executive director can't have, you know, if you, if you're doing a perfect vision every year and you're getting 100 new partners.
B
Right.
A
Well, I could maybe keep up with 50 of those on year one.
B
Right.
A
But then what happens on year two and year three and year four when I've got 200, 300, 400, you know, can the executive director, you know, if I can only meet with 50, then how am I going to meet with 200, you know, so there has to be some mechanism for, you know, building a team so that you're. You're focused on the team.
B
Yeah. And that's the scalability. If you're doing development. Right, which is typically what we teach. And if you do a perfect vision dinner, you're going to be growing those major donors, and you need to be preparing as a leader. How do you scale ahead?
A
Yeah, and we, I mean, there are some people in the winter circle, like, I'm thinking of Kristen, you know, at Protect Life Michigan, where she's going through a major growth period. And, you know, we're really proud of her. She is really trying to rely on her team and build a team. Right. But you can, you can see that it's hard, you know, because it's like your team members are never going to care about it the way you do.
B
Right.
A
And so, because especially as you get a bigger team and you're employing them, you know, you're paying them a salary or whatever, they look at it as just a job. You know, even though they might be passionate about it, to them, it still is, you know, still a job. You know, they're. They're coming in, they're going, and they might be really excited about the job at first, but then after, you know, six months, eight months or whatever, things start to become routine and it can just feel like their responsibilities just don't go all the way. Versus you as the leader. You're passionate. You give up everything for this.
B
Well, you were called to that. And it is hard. No one will ever, no matter how committed they are, be as passionate as the founder. And so that's difficult, but you do need to get past that. That's exactly right.
A
So really what we're going to ask, you know, I'm going to ask you is, you know, really, what can we do as leaders to build a fully functioning development team? And what. What does that look like? How, how does, you know, Jim, you. You're working at CREW, $750 million organization. You know, you guys have a massive development team. You know, break it down for me of some key things. I know you can't. You can't break it all the way down. But, like, what. What would you say are, like maybe three. Three different kind of overarching components that make up a great development team.
B
I recommend what we refer to in fundraising masterminds as a leadership triangle. And that includes the executive director, the board of directors, and the development director. It's a perfect triangle. That works all three elements all together, that all parties are part of developing the relationship in there. So the executive director has their role. The board. Board plays a role in developing the relationships. And the development director, in a lot of ways acts as the conductor in this situation.
A
Okay, so you're telling me in the leadership triangle because I get the position, but you're saying the board needs to be involved in development.
B
Absolutely.
A
I thought that's why we hired a development director for.
B
No, I mean, nice try, but that's just like.
A
I mean, what does the development director do? I mean, that's why we hired him, is to, you know, do all the development.
B
Absolutely. The development director cannot. And I know, Jason, you're being tongue in cheek because we've even done some videos and I hope people go out there to watch the videos on the role of development director and the role of the board. But the bottom line is, absolutely, the board needs to be a key player in that role. And the development director really acts as a conductor of this orchestra, this little band. And make sure that everyone is playing a part in that, because your executive director. So major donors only want to meet with the executive director. The executive director can't meet with everyone. And so you need to narrow the number of people. That means that the. The development director needs more help. And of course, the board, who has fiduciary responsibility to not just make sure that money is being spent properly, but also that money is being raised properly. So they need to play a role. They can't sit on their hands. They can't come to meetings and just give opinion.
A
Right.
B
They actually have to participate in this.
A
So you're saying the leadership triangle is, you know, the executive director, the board and the development director.
B
Right.
A
But they all are working together as
B
a team in a coordinated effort to
A
actually lead the development effort. That's. So the leadership isn't coming solely from the development director.
B
No, that's right.
A
You just blew a few development directors minds, I think.
B
Oh, I'm sure I did.
A
Because. Well, I'm sure there's a lot of development directors out there who feel the weight.
B
Oh, absolutely.
A
You know, I was given this massive responsibility to raise x $100,000 per year, and it's all on me. Yeah, the. The board, the executive director just said, this is what you need to do. If you don't, if you don't bring in the dough, then goodbye for you, you know.
B
Well, I hope actually that I'm. What we're hearing is a sigh of relief from the development director because they're like, oh, it's not all on my shoulders where the mind blowing is happening with the executive director and the board, because as you said, that executive director is probably out there thinking, well, terrific, I hired a development director. I don't need to do anything. No, they need to understand that they are critical and the board, because the board is probably thinking the same thing. Good thing I don't have to raise any money anymore. No, you need, we need to shift that mindset.
A
Yeah. So yeah, if you're a development director and you're listening to this and you're like, well, that's not how my executive director thinks or that's not how my board thinks.
B
Right.
A
Definitely do a little Google search on fundraising masterminds board. And we've got like probably five or six podcast episodes, really lengthy episodes where we go into like the role of boards. We go into the role of executive directors. Right. But they, the board doesn't have the same role as a development director, but they do have a role in development and they need to understand what that is.
B
They're unique role in there.
A
And the executive director doesn't have the same responsibilities as the development director, but they have a unique role and they need to understand what that is.
B
Right.
A
And then the development director does not have the same responsibilities as neither the board or the executive director, but they have a unique role. And what we're saying is, with the leadership triangle, every one of these positions understands their unique role and then they understand how to work together as a unified team.
B
Right.
A
To move development in the right way.
B
Absolutely.
A
And that's the, that's the foundation to a great development team or a great development system.
B
Well, absolutely. And let me give you a great example. I shout out to Josh Newell, who is the director of the Jesus film, which is one of the key elements of the Cruise strategy. And Josh is executive director. And I heard him speak about a year ago at a conference and he said, right in the middle of $150 million capital campaign, I have got an amazing development staff. Matt Thiessen, who is my development director, is doing an amazing job. But I, and this is Josh saying this, but I realize that really I serve as the chief development officer, even though that's not my title, but I have to play a role in this process. And you know, if I'm Matt Thiefson, I'm thinking, you know, amen to that. And I appreciate that. Because so many executive directors, so many leaders don't get that, that they play a major role.
A
Jim, I'm Thinking of, you know, some of the blockbuster movies out there, like bravehear, maybe Save Him, Private Ryan or something. You know, these, these like movies where there's like these epic battles.
B
Right.
A
You know, Narnia or something, you know. Who's usually leading the charge of the epic battle of the movie?
B
Well, it's usually the king.
A
Yeah, that's what I was getting at.
B
Yeah.
A
You know, you would think that the, you know, if I was the king and I had all the power and wealth, you know, well, why don't I just send my servants out to fight my battles? Why is the king like the. At the front of the front, usually like the first one out with all, everyone around him, you know, because he's leading by example. He's the, he is the king, right? He is, you know, so I think we need to have that approach with, you know.
B
Oh, absolutely. Well, think about this and I'll give you, I'm going to give you a little bit of a Bible quiz. Jason, what was the epic fall that happened when a king did not go out to lead his, his troops, the battle and left himself open to great temptation because he was not out front? What was that? What was the epic fall? What was.
A
That was David and Bathsheba.
B
Absolutely.
A
And that was, that was. Yeah, it's a good point, you know, because he should have been out there,
B
should have been with his troops.
A
Absolutely.
B
Instead he was sitting out, you know, walking on his, on his roof.
A
And that was kind of the beginning of the end, his family kind of thing. Because a lot of family issues came after that.
B
Yeah. But all that to say is he should have been out there with his troops. And sometimes that can happen with executive directors. They're not out there with the troops.
A
Yeah. We actually have planned in July to talk about the leadership triangle in a little bit more depth.
B
Unpack that.
A
So we're not going to focus too much on this right now. But let's move on to the second thing that we need to build a development system.
B
Well, the second one is to hire development associates. And these are individuals who are helping to lead specific roles that you've got. If you've got efforts with a, a program, a regular giving program, a direct marketing department, a major donor, a middle level area. These are individuals that you entrust with specific departments or specific roles to help programs. So these individuals are either trained or they've already proven to be specialists in these areas that you are bringing to help lead specific efforts.
A
Right, right. And then the third one is development assistance.
B
That's right.
A
Development assistance. There's two kinds of development assistance, but basically one is focused on assisting with relationships and then the other one is focused on assisting with systems or back end things. That's right. But the assistants kind of help the development associates and they also could help, you know, the leadership triangle as well.
B
That's right.
A
But the great thing about this, and we, we, we actually spent a whole year talking about this in the Winner's Circle level two program. You know, so this, we're, we're like very, this is just the surface.
B
Right.
A
Very high level. But we, we, we spent a whole year going through, you know, evaluating the board, building a team, you know, understanding what, what associates do what, and how it all works. But you need a framework to be able to function in so that as your organization grows, it can be supported. It's kind of like having an operating system in your computer. Right. If we didn't have operating systems, there'd be no order. We'd have to just turn on the computer and be like, how do I get this thing started again? And it would be different every time. But, but the operating system creates order. And so you need that order, you need that framework in your organization so that you can, you know, add things to it and it's done in an organized way.
B
Or as we said originally with the title, make it scalable. And that's, that's so important that you've got the, and you're, what you're hoping to build. You're wanting to build a development enterprise and you're wanting to fill spots in that so you can help this be a well oiled machine and function properly. To help it serve and really to help facilitate the relationship better.
A
Yeah. So I guess to answer the question, how do I, you know, how do I scale without burning out my relationships? The answer is really you need to have a scalable development framework.
B
Right.
A
And you, it starts with the leadership triangle and then it moves to the development associates and the, and the assistants. If you can build it in a structured way like this, you will have the leadership and the, and the structure in place to, to scale.
B
Right.
A
And, and, and guess what, you're you as a director or a board member or, or development director, you're not going to be doing everything Right. Right. That's right there. Everyone has their role, you know, but everyone is functioning as a team. Yeah. You know, and, and that's, that's how you know when you, when you go into, I, I've used this analogy before, but when you go into Starbucks, you know, to buy a cup of coffee. You know, there's not typically one person, you know, doing everything, doing every single thing. Right. There's typically like four or five people. And everyone has their little role and everyone knows exactly what to do. And because of that, Starbucks can serve like 100 customers probably an hour.
B
An hour? Yeah.
A
You know, because it's just, it's just like a well oiled machine. They, they know what they need to just get everything done.
B
It's very efficient and generally everybody does one thing right, you know, and that's what they're doing.
A
And so, and every business is like that, you know, and so I'm not just trying to pick on Starbucks, but you go into any business, McDonald's, anything, like you said.
B
Yeah.
A
And, and so it's, it should be that way with your nonprofit. When a non profit is growing, when a nonprofit is changing from, you know, a baby to a toddler to an adult, a lot of our people, you know, that come to us through the perfect vision that are, you know, they're, they're really in puberty or something, you know, and they're in that awkward stage and then they do the perfect visionary. It's a big move, you know, towards adulthood. But a lot of them struggle with the growing pains of how do I actually change the way I've been doing. I've been doing it this way for 10 years and now I have to think about things differently.
B
Right.
A
And that's exactly why we have the Winner's circle. It's our three year program that helps to organizations figure this out.
B
Yes. And it's a step by step process. Yeah, you do this, then you do this, then you do this and then you do this.
A
So I know we talk a lot about the perfect vision that are on our programs and certainly if you are interested in that, you should definitely look into it. You can get started right away with our pre course accelerator. We do new classes starting every month. So that's helping get people started earlier. But it's the first step to this bigger picture, which is, you know, how do we actually grow and scale your development efforts so that we can build new major partners and be able to handle more and more, you know, as we get bigger.
B
Right. Jason, what I love about it is it forces people to get outside the box, to get outside their comfort zone because you start to think that this can't get done without me and that our, you know, we need just me to do everything. When we, we explain to everyone in the course that you can actually raise significantly More money. When you bring on more people and when you raise more money, that allows you to bring on more people. So it grows in a way that it should grow. Rather than just. Just think inside the box, we get you thinking outside the box.
A
Well, I guarantee you, in about 80 years from now, your organization will be running without you.
B
Without question. Absolutely.
A
So you better have a system in place.
B
Crew is working. We're on our 75th anniversary this year in 2026. Yeah. And I was not a part of all 75 years. Contrary to popular belief. I was not there all the time, but I.
A
You weren't born on the campus of crew.
B
I was not. Absolutely. Yeah. And set up a structure. I'm the chief development officer reporting to the president, But I've got four directors, and under them are 12 team leaders, and under them are four to six people. Under them, it's an army of 50 individuals who. That's all we're doing in development.
A
Right. Focusing that. You have to have that. Otherwise, you know, it's just mayhem.
B
Right.
A
You can't.
B
Right.
A
You can't run an organization that way. So thinking about it like a business, you know, you guys are a large enterprise, so you do have to. You know, the early days when Bill Bright did everything himself, everything himself is a very different mindset from where you guys are at now 75 years later. And at some point in time, the switch had to happen.
B
1972, Jason. It came down to 28 boxes in our vice president's bathroom. I just did a history lesson. From 1951 to 1972, Bill Bright did much of the development himself. Everything relied on him. And he. We had what was called Explo72, and we had 28 pledge cards that came from that event. And it was turned over to two individuals who became our first development officers in 1972. And that from there, we created a structure that now has hundreds of development people.
A
And Bill Bright went, oh, good, I don't have to do it anymore.
B
Absolutely not. He knew. He knew that he still needed. But he was the one who went in there and asked people for a million dollars. And that was where it was different.
A
Well, if you'd like to learn more about our programs and how we can help you establish your development system, then there's a QR code on the screen. You can scan that or click the link in the description. That'll take you to a brief application where we just kind of verify that you're a legitimate nonprofit. And then from there, you can book a call with one of our team members and basically just ask them any question you want. They are fully trained. They've gone through all the programs. They know the ins and outs of what we teach and how it works. So you can just, you know, ask questions. They'll ask you a bunch of questions, and we'll see if you guys would be a good fit for the program. Most of you are. And so I would reach out and check it out. But, Jim, this has been a very helpful episode. Absolutely. Part of our Development 101 series.
B
Right.
A
Add that to the list.
B
Yes.
A
And looking forward to seeing, you know, the next installment of the Development 101. I think we're going to drill into the leadership triangle in about a month or so. Yeah. But any last words that you wanted to mention about just how important it is to have a framework for major partners?
B
Yeah. Well, I get that this is uncomfortable for some people. It really is, because it means you need to release control. And that can be uncomfortable for people right there. It can be uncomfortable executive director. It can be uncomfortable for a development director. But you need to do it. If you. If God has called you to grow as an organization, you've got to allow him to work. And that means releasing some of those things. Just as we release some of our. Our burdens to the Lord to accomplish things, we've got to release some of our burdens to those people underneath us and build a structure. Right. Right.
A
Well, thanks again for tuning in to this episode of the Fundraising Masterminds podcast. We will see you next time.
B
Take care.
Date: June 24, 2026
Hosts: Jason Galasinski (A) & Jim Dempsey (B)
This episode is part of the Development 101 series, diving into the essential question: How do nonprofit leaders scale major donor development efforts without sacrificing the depth and quality of donor relationships? Jason and Jim utilize their experience to break down why many organizations get stuck at the “founder-centric” stage, and provide actionable frameworks for building a scalable, sustainable, and relationship-based development system.
Key Team Layers:
The Goal:
Establish a repeatable, scalable “operating system” for development, enabling smooth transitions as the organization grows.
On Letting Go and Scaling:
“It really has to do with high control. They can’t hand off because they don’t trust someone... So as a result, they end up killing themselves because they are the only one.” (Jim, 00:10)
On the Framework for Scaling:
“You need to have operating systems… so you need that order, you need that framework in your organization so that you can add things to it and it's done in an organized way.” (Jason, 21:11)
On Leadership Involvement:
“I realize that really I serve as the chief development officer, even though that's not my title, but I have to play a role in this process.” (Jim, quoting Josh Newell, 17:12)
On Mindset Shift:
“You can actually raise significantly more money when you bring on more people and when you raise more money, that allows you to bring on more people. So it grows in a way that it should grow… we get you thinking outside the box.” (Jim, 25:29)
On Control and Growth:
“If God has called you to grow as an organization, you've got to allow Him to work. And that means releasing some of those things.” (Jim, 29:21)
If you’re a nonprofit leader facing growth pains, struggling with donor relationship handoff, or feeling the burnout of being “the only one,” this episode provides both philosophical and practical guidance for building a team, a structure, and a system that supports exponential, relationship-driven growth.