Man_face_down_on_desk_burnout_pexels-karolina-grabowska-5717795The nonprofit sector, where I have spent the entirety of my career, is often woefully (and sometimes willfully) behind the curve on adapting to change. How many organizations had “preparing for a global health crisis” as a strategic planning priority?

Before 2020, some 1.54 million U.S. nonprofits were staffed by more than 12.5 million employees. Within the first three months of the pandemic, 1.64 million of those jobs vanished—and that’s a conservative estimate. Many of those jobs were eventually recovered, yet as 2021 came to a close, more than a quarter remained lost....

Nearly 10 percent of the U.S. nonprofit workforce are fundraisers. This hardworking cadre helps to raise hundreds of billions of dollars annually in a sector that grows more competitive, challenging, and necessary with every year....

I’ve been following the Community-Centric Fundraising (CCF) movement — a network of nonprofiteers who endeavor to “evolve how fundraising is done in the nonprofit sector.” Specifically, I’m inspired by how different fundraisers and organizations apply CCF’s 10 principles to philanthropy. This led to the idea of a development bill of rights....

Read the full commentary by Evan Wildstein, a fundraiser and nonprofiteer in Houston, Texas.

(Photo credit: Karolina Grabowska via Pexels)