End the Capacity Gap with a Fractional Team
It’s time to bridge the nonprofit capacity gap – and fractional team building is the place to start.
Your nonprofit’s mission and vision may be unique, but the challenges you face are not.
You’ve read all the articles. You’ve taken the online courses. You invested in a consultant to develop a plan. You know what to do.
But you can’t help but wonder: Do we have the team we need to climb this hill?
You are not alone. In fact, More Than Giving works with hundreds of nonprofits across the country, providing expertise and extra hands to support their work in a sustainable, surprisingly affordable way. Let’s take a look at a real-world scenario based on a composite of More Than Giving clients to see how organizations like yours are bridging the capacity gap — not by working harder, but by changing their approach to team building.
The Situation
"Nonprofit X" has an annual budget of $1.2 million. The team is composed of four full-time employees: an executive director (ED), two program personnel, and a development director who is responsible for annual appeals, event planning and database management as well as marketing and communications. Event execution, payroll and bookkeeping/accounting are outsourced. The organization’s board just approved a bold strategic plan to expand services by 30%.
The Problem: Even without the expansion plan, the ED is drowning in administrative functions and board management. She is spending 15 hours a week on scheduling, inbox management and basic compliance alone. The board wants her and her development director to launch a major gifts program to fund the expansion, but they are stretched to the limit just keeping the lights on.
The Traditional Path: The board suggests hiring a director of operations.
The Reality of that Path: It will take as long as six months to recruit and hire the right person, one month to onboard them, and a minimum cost of $90,000 in salary plus benefits. By the time help arrives the year will be almost over.
“Nonprofit X” doesn’t need a full-time hire six months from now; they need to be able to execute strategic initiatives now.
Sound Familiar?
There is little doubt that many of you reading this are shaking your heads in recognition. The details may not match up perfectly, but “Nonprofit X” represents a fundamental truth about the challenges faced by you and your fellow professionals in the sector.
The Turnaround: The Fractional Injection
Instead, "Nonprofit X" chooses a fractional approach, starting with a Nonprofit Virtual Assistant (NPVA®) for 20 hours/month and a director-level fractional team member for 10 hours/month to focus on operations.
Here is what happened in the first 90 days at our fictional (but all-too-real) organization.
Week 1: The Relief Valve
The NPVA® didn’t need extensive training. They had already been certified in nonprofit best practices and arrived ready to hit the ground running.
Action: They took over daily responsibility for the ED’s inbox and calendar immediately. The NPVA® was prepared to provide support for board meetings, ensuring that pre-meeting materials and post-meeting follow-up were completed in a timely fashion. They created a system for receiving and processing invoices so that vendors were paid on time and the bookkeeper/accountant had what they needed to reconcile monthly.
Action: In addition, the NPVA® brought experience in fundraising support and was able to infuse and implement tools to stay on top of donor relationships. This included timely gift processing and acknowledgment.
Result: For the first time in two years, the ED ended her Friday at 5:00 PM with a cleared inbox.
Month 1: Strategy into Action
With the administrative fires under control, the fractional operations director stepped in to assess the organization’s daily operations, focusing on gaps, compliance and streamlined efficiencies.
Action: Instead of just giving advice, the operations director joined the leadership team. They ensured that taxes and audits were completed and posted publicly and that all grant-related reporting was up to date. They tightened and documented internal processes, integrated strategic plan objectives into operations, and created a 12-week execution calendar, which the NPVA® put into a project management system for efficiency.
Result: The plan moved from “on the shelf” to “in progress.” The operations director provided navigation, management and accountability, freeing the ED to devote more time to a fundraising leadership role.
Month 2: Filling All Gaps
As operations fell into line, the need for additional fundraising expertise was evident. The full-time development director was maintaining an effective email and direct mail appeal program and, with the help of the outsourced events consultant, was leading a successful events calendar. However, the director had little experience with major donor cultivation and even less time in his busy schedule to pursue a new strategy. An experienced fractional development officer (DO) was brought in for 15 hours/month.
Action: The DO worked with the NPVA® to mine the database for major donor candidates and, meeting with the ED and several board members, developed a list of prospective major donors, creating an individualized cultivation and solicitation plan for each. Cultivation and solicitation target dates, with assigned roles for the ED, development director and board members, were added to the database.
Action: The NPVA® pulled weekly reports and “to-do” lists from the database to ensure that each prospect was on track toward a major gift. The fractional DO met weekly with the ED and development director to track progress and troubleshoot, and monthly with the board to provide support. When needed, the fractional DO led instructional sessions with board members to prepare them for their part in the cultivation and solicitation process.
Result: The ED and board were actively engaged in targeted, sustained cultivation plans designed to yield major gifts. The full-time development director was learning the structure and strategy of a major donor program, increasing his value as a core member of the organization.
Month 3: The Transformation
By the 90-day mark, the organization looked different.
The Metrics: They had re-engaged 20% of lapsed donors and closed three major gifts. The gift processing backlog was eliminated, and new gifts were being processed and acknowledged within a 48-hour window. Timely grant reporting resulted in payments toward core programming.
Staffing Expertise: The NPVA® was keeping the ED’s inbox and calendar in a manageable state, and the fractional operations director had all systems, from payroll to accounts payable, running smoothly. The fractional DO was able to build out from the success of the organization’s annual giving and events programs to build a pipeline of major gifts.
The Culture: The ED was no longer worried about the printer or the schedule. She was focused on executing the organization’s strategic plan and on diversifying revenue streams to increase the organization's resilience. The development director’s growing knowledge of major donor cultivation was contributing to a more strategic approach to the annual giving and events programs.
Why It Worked
"Nonprofit X" stopped treating their capacity gap as a hiring problem and started treating it as a bandwidth problem that could be addressed immediately and expertly. By plugging in the right skills at the right levels, they bypassed the slow hiring cycle and the risk of a bad hire. Moreover, those people put systems in place that allowed everyone at the organization to make the most of their time now – and going forward.
In other words, they didn't wait until they were "ready" to grow. They built the capacity to grow.