Coaching and Developing the Next Generation of Major Gift Fundraisers
Scaling Major Gifts. Strategies, action steps, and ideas for scaling major gifts by Tammy Zonker, Major Gift Expert & Keynote Speaker.
How Do You Coach and Develop the Next Generation of Major Gift Fundraisers?
Major gift fundraisers are leaving faster than most organizations can replace them, and the answer isn't a better job posting. It's deliberately developing the people already on your team through everyday coaching, small stretch assignments, and a one-page development plan you revisit. If you manage fundraisers, or you're the seasoned person on a team of newer ones, this issue is for you.
This is for development directors, major gift officers, and executive directors who want to build major gift talent instead of constantly rehiring it. After reading this, you'll be able to:
Name the four competencies tomorrow's major gift fundraisers need
Turn ordinary moments in your week into coaching without adding meetings
Build a one-page development plan for one person on your team
Let’s get into it
Last spring I sat with a chief development officer who had lost three major gift officers in fourteen months. She'd raised salaries. She'd rewritten the job description twice. She'd hired a recruiter.
I asked her what happened in the first ninety days for a new officer on her team. She said, "We give them a portfolio and a login."
That's not a criticism of her. It's what most of us inherited. We were handed a list and told to go make friends with rich people, and the ones who survived it became the people now doing the hiring.
But in 2026 that approach costs more than it used to. Replacing a major gift officer runs well over a year of salary once you count lost momentum in a portfolio, and the relationships that go quiet during a vacancy don't always come back. Meanwhile, the people leaving are often good. They just never got taught.
Why is developing major gift talent urgent right now?
Three things have changed at once.
The work is harder than it was fifteen years ago. Donors ask better questions, expect faster answers, and want to see impact in a way that used to be optional. A new officer who could once learn on the job for two years is now expected to be useful in two quarters.
The bench is thinner. Fewer people are entering fundraising as a first career choice, and the people who do arrive often come from adjacent fields with real transferable skills and no major gift training at all.
And the people we hire have different expectations. They want to know what they're growing into. In my experience, the fundraisers who leave in year two rarely leave over money. They leave because nobody could tell them what year three looked like.
What competencies do tomorrow's major gift fundraisers need?
When I look at the fundraisers who are thriving right now, four things show up consistently.
Strategic thinking. Not just working a portfolio, but knowing why a donor is in it, what the next right move is, and when to walk away from a name that isn't going anywhere. This is the skill most often assumed and least often taught.
Side note: This is precisely why Jerold Panas and William Sturtevant founded the Institute for Charitable Giving over 35 years ago, now the Modern Institute for Charitable Giving, to teach fundraisers how to excel at major gifts. Learn more.
Technology fluency. Comfort with the CRM, and increasingly with AI as a working tool. Not as a novelty. As something that gives them back four hours a week for donor conversations.
An equity lens. Understanding that generosity lives in every community, and that our traditional prospect research often points us back to the same rooms. Newer fundraisers tend to see this faster than we do. That's an asset, not a challenge to manage.
Resilience. Major gift work is a long feedback loop with a lot of quiet in it. Learning to sit in that quiet without reading it as failure is a skill, and it can be coached.
Read that list again and notice how few of those are taught by handing someone a portfolio and a login.
What does everyday coaching look like day to day?
Here's the good news. The coaching that changes careers is rarely formal. It's small, it's frequent, and it happens inside work you're already doing.
Think out loud in front of them. When you're deciding whether to ask now or wait another month, narrate the reasoning. Newer fundraisers can see what we do. They can't see how we decided.
Bring them to the meeting. Not to present. To listen, take notes, and debrief with you in the car afterward. One good debrief teaches more than a 60-minute webinar.
Ask before you answer. When someone brings you a problem, try "What are you thinking?" first. It takes ninety seconds longer, and it builds a fundraiser instead of a dependent.
Debrief the losses out loud. When a gift doesn't come through, walk through it together without blame. Resilience is built by watching someone you respect stay steady after a no.
Name what they did well, specifically. Not "great job." Try "the way you paused after her question instead of filling the silence, that's the whole skill."
None of this requires a budget or a new program. It requires you deciding that developing people is part of the job rather than something you'll get to when the campaign calms down.
How do you build a simple development plan?
One page. That's it. I've watched elaborate competency matrices die in a shared drive while a single page taped inside a notebook changed someone's career.
Here's the structure I teach.
One growth area for the next ninety days. Just one. "Lead a solicitation conversation on my own" or "build a strategy for my top ten donors."
One stretch assignment attached to it. The stretch is where the growth happens. Let them draft the case for a proposal. Let them run the debrief. Let them present a portfolio review to you as they would to a board committee.
Who they'll learn from. You, someone else on staff, or a peer at another organization. Development doesn't have to run through the org chart.
How you'll both know it worked. An observable signal, not a feeling. "By November she has led two solicitation conversations with me in the room and one without."
A recurring thirty minutes to talk about it. On the calendar. Separate from the portfolio review, because otherwise the pipeline swallows it every time.
Where can AI help with coaching?
This is one of the more useful things AI is doing for nonprofit leaders right now, and it's mostly about giving you back the time to coach at all.
Have a newer officer draft their donor strategy without using personally identifiable donor information, then use an approved AI assistant to turn their call notes into a clean summary and suggested next steps. Then you review the thinking together. You're coaching the judgment instead of correcting the formatting.
Role-play is the other one. Use a tool like Practivated, created by my friend Mallory Erickson, to play a hesitant donor who has three objections, and let a newer fundraiser practice the conversation five times before they have it once for real. I've seen that reduce first-solicitation nerves more than any amount of encouragement from me.
What AI can't do is tell someone they handled a hard, real-life moment well. That has to come from you.
Try this next week
Pick one person. Choose the one person you'll intentionally develop between now and the end of the year. Write their name down somewhere you'll see it.
Build the one-page plan. Thirty minutes with them, not for them. Growth area, stretch assignment, who they learn from, how you'll know it worked.
Bring them to one donor meeting. Then spend fifteen minutes debriefing it. Ask what they noticed before you tell them what you noticed.
Want to take a deeper dive?
This week's episode of The Intentional Fundraiser Podcast, Growing the Next Wave of Major Gift Talent, opens with the mentor who changed my career by doing something that took her about four minutes. I also walk through what's different about the fundraisers coming up now, the coaching moves that work, and what it costs us when we skip this.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q1. Who is this approach best suited for?
This is designed for development directors, chief development officers, and senior major gift officers who want to grow the fundraisers on their team instead of replacing them every eighteen months. It works especially well if you already have at least one newer or mid-level fundraiser on staff and some regular contact with them.
Q2. How much time should I expect this to take each week?
Plan on about one hour a week per person you're developing. Thirty minutes of dedicated conversation, and the rest folded into work you're already doing, like bringing them to a meeting or debriefing a call. The consistency matters more than the volume, so protect that thirty minutes the way you'd protect a donor visit.
Q3. What if my organization is small and I wear multiple hats?
The principles hold, the scale changes. Instead of a full development plan for a whole team, pick one person and one growth area for the next ninety days. If you're a shop of one, find a peer at another organization and trade coaching conversations once a month. That counts.
Q4. How do I know if it's working?
Look for early signals like a newer fundraiser bringing you a recommendation instead of a question, better notes in the CRM without being asked, and someone volunteering for a donor conversation they would have avoided in the spring. Over time you should see longer tenure, faster ramp for new hires, and portfolios that hold their momentum through a transition.
Q5. Where does AI fit into this, if at all?
AI is there to clear space for the human work, not to replace it. Use an approved assistant to turn call notes into summaries and next steps, to run donor role-play practice before a first solicitation, and to draft the first version of a development plan you then edit together. The encouragement, the honest feedback, and the read on when someone is ready stay firmly with you.