Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I believe that effective nonprofits try to use 25% or less of expenditures as overhead.
Benefits can easily add 25% to your salary. Let's give it another 50% or so to cover rent, utilities, supplies, insurance, postage, legal/accounting/professional, auditing, travel, ...
Therefore to simply cover costs, you have to raise 175% of your salary annually. This means that you are 100% inefficient! A complete failure at nonprofit fundraising. In less charitable terms, you would be a grifter.
To rate as an effective charity you would need to pull in 700% of your salary.
In the course of my corporate career, I managed proposal production and wrote the executive summaries for three different bids that won contracts valued from $100M to $310M. I got a corporate award and at each of the celebratory dinners I received special commendations. But, no, I did not get a big raise. It was my job. I was supposed to write winning proposals.
Also, in my spare time, I have written winning grant proposals for several art- and education-related non-profit organizations. I didn't earn a dime for that. They were volunteer gigs I considered to be donations for charities I liked. So please consider, if they could find someone like me to write grant proposals for free, you wouldn't even have that job. But, congratulations. In this economy it's a great achievement to be bringing in any amount of grant money. Donors are much less generous than they used to be. Keep track of your successes; they will help you to land a better position some day. Resume readers really like achievements that can be quantified in dollars.
Wow, I had stopped reading this thread, but let me make it clear in case I wasn't clear enough in the first place.
I am *NOT* a fundraising employee! I could see where people would assume that based on the content of the topic, but I never said that I was. I am in the programs department. My main job is to plan and provide programming as part of our nonprofit. I was not hired as a fundraising coordinator or anything similar. That is why I stressed in my first post that these funds are all coming in as part of my individual efforts, not anything our organization normally does for fundraising.
When I was hired, the supervisor said that due to my writing and editing background I might be handy to write some grants and grant proposals in the offseason when there wasn't anything else going on, but it wasn't and isn't part of my job description.
That's why I was feeling good about my situation here. Because in addition to fulfilling all of my duties in the programs department, I've gone outside my expected role and duties to bring in more money than my salary is worth.
That's why I was feeling good about my situation here. Because in addition to fulfilling all of my duties in the programs department, I've gone outside my expected role and duties
You need to stop focusing on your individual ROI and look at it in terms of what I've pulled out here. You've added additional responsibilities to your role and would like to explore the opportunity for a raise or a change in job title (and concurrent pay increase). If you have a performance review coming up, that would be a great time to talk about this. If not, get your ducks in a row to go to your boss and make a case for why your additional job duties warrant a new title and/or pay rate. Again, I'd advise you focus not on the money you bring in relative to your salary when you're doing this.
I could see where people would assume that based on the content of the topic (and how you
presented what everyone is left to assume are the pertinent details...), but I never said that I was.
Don't do that.
I hope it isn't typical of how you do your jobs generally (main, side, peripheral, etc)
That's why I was feeling good about my situation here. Because in addition to fulfilling all of my duties in the programs department, I've gone outside my expected role and duties to bring in more money than my salary is worth.
That's only your opinion. You need to provider data to support you claim. How do you know they are not bring in the same money without you? How do you know if they hire someone else, they would not bring in more?
Non profit companies don't always make money. As for for-profit companies, you are supposed to bring in more money than your salary is worth. Otherwise, there is no reason to hire you.
Sorry if that seemed harsh. It really wasn't meant to be.
And it really wasn't meant to be directed solely at you.
But the issue pops up a lot around here with lack of detail or biased focus
making nearly every post require some picking at to get down to the gritty if not the nitty.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
