Ep. 136: Part-Time Executive Director? How to Raise Enough to Go Full-Time (and Quit Your Day Job)?
EPISODE 136
Part-Time Executive Director? How to Raise Enough to Go Full-Time (and Quit Your Day Job)?
About the Episode:
You’ve poured your heart into your nonprofit, spending nights and weekends building programs, rallying volunteers, and making an impact—yet, there’s still not enough funding to quit your day job and go all in. Sound familiar? So many nonprofit founders get stuck in this exact cycle—working tirelessly but never quite breaking through to a fully-funded organization. And here’s the hard truth: The way you’re fundraising is keeping you stuck.
In this episode, I’m breaking down how to raise enough money to finally go full-time, why small-dollar fundraisers (like that exhausting gala or 5K) aren’t the answer, and the exact strategy to bring in $10K+ every time you fundraise. Plus, we’re talking about the mindset shifts you need to make to pay yourself without guilt—because your nonprofit can’t grow if it can’t keep you. If you’re tired of running on fumes and ready to lead your organization with full-time energy and full-time funding, this episode is your blueprint.
Here’s what you’ll learn:
The #1 reason part-time Executive Directors stay stuck (and how to break the cycle)
Why small fundraising events aren’t the magic fix
How to start securing mid and major gifts instead of relying on small-dollar donations
The money mindset shift you need to confidently pay yourself
How investing in leadership increases funding by 2-3x
A step-by-step guide to raising $10K+ every campaign using the Sprint Method
It’s not your stories—it’s how you’re telling them. If your amazing work isn’t getting the attention (and donations) it deserves, it’s time for a messaging shift. The Brave Fundraiser’s Guide guide gives you 10 done-for-you donor prompts to make your message impossible to ignore. Get it for free here! https://christinaedwards.krtra.com/t/xKuLs6tOiPZa
Christina’s Favorite Takeaways:
“Oftentimes, the number of people and the power it takes to do something like an auction or a gala is costing you time that you could be spending building up your pipeline and securing mid and major-level gifts.”
“Your nonprofit won't scale if you can't afford to switch to a faster, better way to fundraise.”
“If you want to go full-time, you need more leads.”
“You have to become the executive director who runs a half-a-million-dollar nonprofit before you actually are the executive director who runs a half-a-million-dollar nonprofit.”
“The path to 100k and the path to 200k are paved with no's.”
“If you build the muscle of getting rejected, you will win.”
“More funding solves so many problems and helps to collapse timelines.”
“Money doesn't fix every problem, but money does fix a lot of problems.”
“If your nonprofit can't keep you, it can't grow.”
“Operations are program expenses.”
“People are programmatic expenses, so it is not bad to pay yourself.”
“Full-time executive directors raise two to three times more than part-time executive directors.” (Stanford Social Innovation Review)
“If you want your nonprofit to be taken seriously, you have to take yourself seriously, and that means funding leadership as a necessity, not an afterthought.”
Episode Resources:
Ep 80: [Client Success Story] The Nonprofit Growth Playbook with FOTCOH's Nathan Ruby
Ep. 133: How a VA Can Save Your Sanity & Scale Your Impact with Sara Wiles
FREE Resources from Splendid Consulting:
How to Work with Christina and Splendid Consulting:
The SPRINT Method™ - Fundraise Like a Pro, 5 Figures At a Time
JOIN THE WAITLIST: The Purpose & Profit Group Coaching Program
Connect with Christina and Splendid Consulting:
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*Links may be affiliate links which means I may earn a commission at no cost to you.
Christina Edwards 0:00Welcome back to the podcast. I am back in office after spending the week in Orlando for give con. It was like nonprofit summer camp. It was so fun to meet so many of you in person, give you real hugs, hear the real stories about what you're working on, share stories about what's working what we're excited about, and speak in front of all of you and present my session. And I just want to thank you. Thank you for hollering Christina across across the conference center so I could give you a big old hug and hi to my new friends. I challenged myself to ensure that I was sitting and eating breakfast with new friends and not kind of hanging out with the same group that I knew, and I wanted to make some time to connect with so many of you. So yeah, it was a very cup filling week, and a really good reminder, whether you're going to a conference or you're hanging out at your local coffee shop or membership group or something like that. Disrupt it, pattern, interrupt. Go sit with some new people. Stretch, stretch, stretch out, stretch the muscles, get in your reps of talking to new people and, you know, sharing stories about your mission. Okay, today's episode is all for the part time Executive Director. This is likely the person who is the founder of the nonprofit I am speaking to you. So if you're a nonprofit founder, you have a passion project that you're maybe working nights and weekends to build up your nonprofit. Today's episode is for you. Today, we're going to talk about how to raise enough to go full time and quit that day job. Because I have been on calls with many of you, and this is the reality is, you know, you have a family to support. You have yourself to support, so you have that day job to do that while you build up the funding to go full time. Okay, so today we're gonna go through some important steps to go full time, to get the funding, to learn how to raise five figures or more every time you run a fundraiser, so you can put a notice in my day job and go full time with your dream.
Okay, so let's start with a little bit of a reality check. This may look like you're spending nights and weekends building up your nonprofit, figuring out programs, pouring your heart into the mission, but you've been doing this for six months a year, two years. And many organizations come to me, they've been doing this for a lot longer, five plus years, but there still isn't enough money coming in to go full time. So that cycle is true. Whether you're brand brand new, just got your 501 c3, or you may have had this part time side gig thing happening for many, many years. Okay, so either scenario is something I just want to normalize and I see, okay, so here's what I'm seeing, that the cycle that is very, very program heavy, meaning you're out there doing the work, you're in the programs, you're, you know, supplying food drops to the people you serve. You're out there doing the after school tutoring. You're gathering the volunteers. That's what I call like being in the program. Okay, you have a limited, finite amount of time, and you're spending your time there, which makes sense, but it is at the cost of building out your fundraising pipeline. Okay? And maybe you're like, okay, but we are doing fundraisers, and this is what I most common fundraiser I see for this under 100k nonprofit. The most common fundraiser I see is the in person grassroots event. This event maybe a gala, a 5k, an auction, and in person something. And here's the here's the problem with that. I love in person. I just started off this episode with the importance of gathering together in person, but oftentimes the amount of people power it takes to do something like a 5k, an auction, a gala, an award ceremony, a thing is costing you time that you could be spending building up your pipeline and securing mid and major level gifts. So we're going to talk about that today. Okay, so your nonprofit won't scale if you can't afford to switch into what you've been doing, into a faster, better way to fundraise. So I'm going to share today exactly how you can make that transition without burning out, without waiting for the perfect time, without feeling guilty for paying yourself. If that's a sticky one for you, we're going to we're going to address that today. If you feel bad about taking a salary. We're also going to talk about why when you finally fundraise at the level you need to, not only do you win, your family wins, the people in your home, right, but your mission and the people you serve and your team win too. I am very pro paying yourself more than a little, little tiny stipend because The impact that that creates is so much higher than working for free or paying yourself a stipend.
Okay, so let's talk about the first problem I see. The first problem that I see is why so many Eds are stuck in that part time mode is because they're spending time on everything but scalable fundraising. So that looks like running the programs, instead of driving revenue, focusing on labor intensive fundraising methods, like small events that are like, one big pop, you know, you've got the venue, you've got the sponsorships, you've got the food, you've got the drink, then you have to sell the tickets, and you're spending so much time selling the ticket, that's a time you don't have the staff, right? You don't have the staff to put on an event that size. So that's your like, one big it's taking up so much time. Instead of strategies that bring in major gifts and predictable funding and not enough bold fundraising, we're going to talk about audacious asks and really a very simple way to lead generate, but a way that lead generation is part of your weekly to do's. Okay, lead generation, meaning getting donor prospects and donors in your pipeline, is essential. It is essential. It is the difference between before and after. Before being part time and after being full time. If you want to go full time, you need more leads. Okay, you have to become the executive director who runs a half a million dollar nonprofit before you actually are the executive director who runs a half a million dollar nonprofit. I'm thinking of my client, Nathan Ruby. He was on the podcast a while back, and he talked about that he runs a nearly $1 million nonprofit, and he talked about how he knew and there have been key points in his organization's growth, he had to take the leap and step into whether it's from a leadership perspective or stepping in from a fundraising perspective or a new strategy perspective. It's like you have to do that in order to grow, you don't wait to grow and then do it. Okay, so starting to step into the identity and for you, if that's the 100k nonprofit, the 500k nonprofit, whatever it is, that means asking for help. Asking for help. This could be with volunteers, this could be with friends, this could be with community members. But asking for help. I've talked to quite a few solo EDS who really lament about really dread asking for money, but equally, they kind of dread asking for help, right? They dread any of it, and so they stay solo fundraising. They stay in that silo, and then the pattern repeats itself that their organization doesn't grow. paying for help. Now you may say, Christina, you're crazy. How could I pay for help, staff support, when we're making x and the answer is, very often, I had an episode very recently about hiring a virtual assistant. Very often, it could be an admin person. It could be a small, small couple hours or couple hours a month role that will free you up time. Imagine spending $500 a month so you can go raise 5000 Okay, so I call this sort of like the executive director that's stuck designing Canva graphics, and it takes them 10 hours between back and forth to get the right graphic for the event, when they could have gone to Fiverr. It's about 100 bucks on it. And while they were spending all that time creating a Canva graphic or figuring out why their website, you know, has a broken link on it, they could have been in a donor meeting securing a $5,000 gift. So just like dipping your toe into like perhaps you need to offload a little something. It's not about bringing on a full time person, the full time salary, but maybe there is a little opportunity there delegating instead of doing everything yourself, handling rejection and pushing forward anyway. The path to 100k the path to 200k is paved with no's. It's paved with no's. You're going to hear no's from donor prospects. You're going to hear no no's from donors already in your pipeline. You're going to hear no's from sponsors. You're going to hear no's from Who else have I left out people, and the more nos you hear, the more yeses you hear, the two go hand in hand. So if you say to me, Christina, we haven't had a donor come in, you know, we haven't had a donation come in, over $500 in months, I say to you, how many no's Have you heard I know, I know no one wants to sign up to hear a bunch of no's, but the two are related. The two are related. I think about my own business. I think about my clients. If you build the muscle of getting rejected, you will win. You will win.
Okay? The more nos I hear, the more yeses I hear. So the more people that sign up for my webinars and don't join the club, the more people that sign up for my webinars and do join the club, and you get better at converting in the process, right? You get better at getting more yeses. So I really want to to to encourage you to think about when was the last time I sat down face to face with a donor on the phone, texted somebody ran a fundraiser, and somebody said, No, it's not for me. Asked a business to become a annual sponsor, whatever it was, and if the answer is like, I can't remember, it's time to get it in the arena. Okay, now I have a new program coming out designed exactly for you. It's called the sprint method. So if you want support on how to do that so you're not going into the arena like not not guided, to even know what to say, to have a successful meeting, to not run out of there when it feels uncomfortable, to not feel prepared. This is for you if you've gone in the arena a few times and it went okay, but not great. This is for you, if you're in the arena, but want to get better at conversions and getting more yeses, this is for you.
Okay, so are you ready to go full time? Let's look at this, like, readiness. Kind of check in. I hesitate to say test, like, test, but like, let's check in on it. Going full time isn't about magic. It's not about there is some thing, some perfect moment in the universe, and you're like, I can quit my job, right? It's always a little bit of a leap. Okay, it's there's the math of it, and there's the mindset of it. So here are some key indicators that you're ready. One, you're done dreaming and you're ready for doing. This may be you if your nonprofit is new, new, new just got your 501, c3, status, and your rear Indigo. This may be you, if your nonprofit is five years old, and you're like, I am so done with this plateau. I'm done. This is our year. I remember my client who said, I'm ready to hit the gas, ready to hit the gas. And I was like, let's hit the gas. Let's go right. So it doesn't really matter how old your nonprofit is, it's more of that mindset of like, no more someday you're ready to hit the gas. You have, here's another one. You have the right infrastructure that looks like at least a handful of board members that that understand, that are engaged, that are active, and understand the importance of your mission and fundraising. Now. Sidebar, it is okay if you say, Christina, they are awesome. They really support our mission. They really support me. They're not really a fundraising board. That's okay. We can get them there. What I don't want to see is you to come to me and say, I don't really have any board members. No one's coming to meetings. We're not having meetings. Okay? So you need to have a handful of board members, okay, you need to have a couple of board members, and they need to be the right board members. And if you have questions about that, reach out to me, and I can support you through that. Okay?
You have a fundraising system that works. You know how to bring in five figures or funding in every single campaign. You have a clear pipeline of donors and supporters. If I said to you, you got to raise 10k by the end of the month, you're like, done, dusted, we got it. If that's not you, you need to join the sprint method. I will give you the complete system to get it done on repeat. I think of this method as turning on the faucet. So like going in the sink and you turn on, you know, and then you turn it off. So literally, I call I named it that because you're taking mini you're taking sprints throughout the year. You're running clear campaigns throughout the year to raise five figures or more when you need it, instead of this is what I see being a constant, reactive state of fundraising, or putting it off until the last two months of the year, and then it's like here on fire. Okay, so you need to have a fundraising system that works. I don't want you to quit your day job and think it's all just going to fall into place. I'm going to take you on a little sidebar, which is lifelong entrepreneur. My last salary job was in college, but there was a moment with my first business where I had two jobs. Yes, two jobs a day, job. I bartended at night, I worked at a concert venue, and I was building up my agency, no or my real estate business, and I can't remember which y'all and at some point, I was like, I think I can do this. Meaning I don't think I need to work this other day job anymore. I don't think I need to work this night job anymore. I think I've got this and. And it was a leap. Still, it still wasn't like the easiest thing to put in my notice. So I just want to, like bookmark, that is, it will feel a little bit like a leap, but like a leap you want to take, okay, but you do want to make sure that you have enough Foundational Finance money coming in. So you're ready to take that leap. One that's the next one you're ready to pay yourself without guilt. More on the guilt thing in a second. So you need to make sure you have these pieces in place. And if you don't yet, don't panic. That's what we're talking about today. That's what I can support you with in my upcoming program.
Okay, so let's talk about the next step, how to raise five figure funding fast, $10,000 or more fast, using the sprint method. This is the biggest shift from side hustle to fully funded, from part time DIY, it guessing trial and error, nights and weekends to raising funding in a fast, strategic, scalable way. So I created the sprint method for organizations. Your organization may be the part time one, you may be full time, and you may still say, I haven't mastered raising five figures on repeat. Okay, then, then it is still for you, you do not have to be part time for this program, because we do have a lot of organizations who are in that bucket. Still, they're full time, but it's a slog. They have not figured it out. Okay, so here's what it fixes. You stop wasting time on slow, inefficient methods of fundraising. You learn how to raise $10,000 or more per campaign. You build donor engagement that actually grows not one off gifts. So that is all about retention and ending churn. I worked with an ed that started with $0 salary, within months, she moved to a stipend, from free to a stipend, then to a fully funded, full time salary. Then she went on to hire a team. I worked with another, another organization, founding Ed. He had been with organization for a very long time, nights and weekends, right? Same thing. He wanted to pay his staff. His staff was volunteers. He wanted to give them a stipend. These are all really important pieces. Nothing can can get you out of that hole, other than donations, right? Nothing will help fast track, not only you getting paid your team or volunteers getting paid if they're you know, and they were in programs, they were operating their programs right, and impact the people you serve. Then more funding, like it solves so many problems and helps to collapse timelines. A lot of times I'll sit on calls, not always with my clients, and I'm like, you know, this is just a money problem. Money fixes this problem. Money doesn't fix every problem, but money does fix a lot of problems, especially at this level, right? Where, if we can pay our full time person, if we can pay a part time programs person, or a full time programs person, right, suddenly we get a lot more efficient. What happens when we get efficiency? We get to scale and that second program you want to launch, or that second night you want to offer your program, or that second day, or you want to serve more people, money solves that problem. Suddenly you can scale up your impact. So it, for me, is very two fold. Not only does it impact you, it impacts your employees, staff contractors, it impacts the people you serve. Okay.
Okay, we're talking about guilt. I see this come up. I see this come up. And maybe this is coming up for you too. Maybe there's some guilt around paying yourself. And I really hate the term living wage, and I'll tell you why living wage, for me, connotates. I get paid enough to barely make ends meet, and I don't like that. I think that's the culture that we do not want to perpetuate, right? That culture of a poverty mindset. Okay? So for me, the goal isn't just like barely enough to scrape by. I always think about, if you run a food pantry, do you want your staff to have to use the food pantry? Because they just barely get enough to get paid, right? They barely get enough to make ends meet that they themselves are recipients of your service? Hell no, no. So it is not bad to pay yourself. It is not bad to pay you and your staff well. in fact, it it's better for retention. Think about it. Talent stays in the sector instead of going to the for profit sector. You get great talent that way. It's better for your programming. Do you want the burnt out program person or the burnt out marketer, right, or the burnt out fundraiser on staff who's barely making ends meet and stressing? Or do you want the person who is well paid, who loves what they do, who has time for rest and vacation and comes to Work and is like ready to go? What? What do you think your difference would be on impact? And that's the same for you. You are. You could be that burnt out person I just described as the executive director. So here's the thing, operations are program expenses. That's my belief. Your nonprofit, if your nonprofit can't keep you, it can't grow. Think about that. If you're in a constant state of churn, or you can only work on your nonprofit sometimes because you're over here earning money in a day job or some other way, it is very hard to grow your nonprofit operations are program expenses. I think about somebody like Steve Jobs. He didn't work for free. Oprah, she didn't work for free. Scott Harrison, the founder of Charity Water, he gets paid very well. It's on his 990 he doesn't work for free. And I'm not mad at any of it. I'm not mad that he gets a great salary. I'm not mad that he has a huge staff of employees, because he's $100 million charity changing water access, making sure, and his goal to make sure everybody has access to clean drinking water. And for me as a donor, I'm not mad at it. I'm not mad that part of my donation. Now his structure is a little bit different, but if part of my donation went towards operation expenses. I'm not mad at it at all. It's not a bad thing. Because if Scott Harrison said, I'm not going to take a paycheck, and I don't think that my staff should take very big paychecks or or not big. Should, should take an you know, should just make a stipend. That would be the smallest grassroots charity that ever existed. It wouldn't have broken 100k think about it. We have to pay people. People, staff are programmatic expenses, so it is not bad to pay yourself.
Okay, this is a good one, and this is going to wake you up if you're not sold yet, nonprofits that invest in leadership raise more full time executive directors Raise two to three times more than part time executive directors. This is from the Stanford Social Innovation Review. Okay, you want more fund, fundraising, revenue to come in, full time, Ed, full time, paid Ed, you will raise two to three times more. Come on, if you want your nonprofit to be taken seriously, seriously by donors, seriously by sponsors and businesses, you have to take yourself seriously, and that means funding leadership as a necessity, not an afterthought. And if your board doesn't get it. You need to make the case. This should be very, very clear to your board, because many of them have day jobs or are retired and did have day jobs, they understand this. They should be very, very, very clear on this. Come reach out to me if you have any pushback on that. Okay. All right. Last piece, I want to go over what happens if you stay stuck, versus what happens when you go all in? And this is a big one because I'm thinking about a call that I had recently with an organization that was 20 plus years old. And by the looks of their website, they had so many programs, you know how you go to the drop down, and it was like this and this and this and this. And it looked one way, but in reality, they were raising maybe $50,000 a year, and they had been around for 20 years. And what I asked when we got on the call together and I was learning more about the organization, was like, Well, how do these it was like, well, this program we are only able to do if we have enough volunteers. And this one was for a while, and this one's really good, and I love this one. And this is another thing is sometimes the sort of founder syndrome, can rear up where it's like you want to have one core program before we add another. Okay, that's a that's a conversation for another day. But it was this idea of this executive director being in front of this organization for 20 plus years, and having it never break through to 100k meant that it never broke through to the true impact it could have. The true impact it could have. It could have served so many more children in this specific community in the past 20 years than it did. Instead, it was serving a very small amount of children each year, because it just didn't have the funding to do so you'd have the partnerships to do so. And that sucks, right? That sucks. And at some point, this executive director is ready to retire, okay? And the next person is not going to come in as an executive director for an organization for. For peanuts, for a stipend. And what's going to happen to that nonprofit? It's going to shutter, right? Because this person has been bootstrapping at nights and weekends for very, very little, barely taking anything. It's a passion project. What about these programs? What about these kids, right? And so it's really, really important to go. How do I get out of my own way on this? If that's you, how do I break through to get out of my own way and move from stuck to going all in? So staying part time means you kind of burn out running in those same circles, I see burnout happen. You rely too much on those small dollar gifts and time sensitive events you can't scale because you're stretched too thin. You can literally only do so much on nights and weekends. Fair, right? Donors don't see your nonprofit as a serious investment, because they can see just as I did when I was looking I was like, but I don't see any information about program number four, how do people sign up? Well, they can't. Doesn't really exist. It's just a thing on our website. The only one we have right now is this one, right? And we're barely scraping by on that, versus getting enough funding to go full time. You fundraise smarter, not harder. You start securing major gifts that are transformational, multi year funding, you finally create that long term impact. Instead of running on fumes, you get to pay people. You get to pay for support, even part time, contracted support will change your life. Change your life. So you can ask yourself, Where do I want to be six months from now so grinding on nights and weekends, or do I want to finally be leading my nonprofit full time? Or do I finally want to be raising $10,000 or more every time we need it, and I have the tools and the systems and the confidence to do that? That's what I want for you. So I highly recommend going to the link in the show notes, or go to splendid courses.com, forward slash, sprint method for more details. Okay, we're going to be hosting an info session, so stay on the lookout for that. We'll link to that in the show notes as well.
And here's the thing you might be listening and thinking, shit, I've run I've run my nonprofit the wrong way. I've been doing it wrong. And that is not the message of this episode. That is not it. The message of this episode is like, let's just hit the gas. Let's just, let's just make it the year where you hit the gas, you've gotten it to where you can get it with this with the tools you have, the support you have. I'm thinking of of Kathy, one of my clients. She's like, I free webinar myself as best I could, and then I knew I needed a coach. And then I knew what I needed, a system, and then I knew I needed the guidance and the tools to raise more be like Kathy. Okay, so it's not about I've been doing it wrong and punishing yourself. It's like, great. I'm ready to level up. For the sprint method, we have a very budget friendly monthly payment plan. So this is made for executive directors that are taking leap. This is made for if you you're even a fundraiser for a small organization and you're ready for a system, bring this to your executive director, okay? And you can choose the payment plan. It's a very flexible and budget friendly. Go to splendid courses.com, forward slash sprint for more details. So here's your final challenge. This this week, I want you to map out, how am I going to raise my next 10k what's my next 10k fundraiser? Or if you're a little more established down the line, how you going to raise your next 25k and if you need help to collapse the timeline, if you need help to build out your donor pipeline, if you need help for a system to do this online and not through a labor intensive event, Gala, 5k thing. Then let's talk. Send me an email, reach out to me on LinkedIn. No more waiting, no more side hustle energy. It's time to step in shoulders back with full time leadership and fundraise like it. All right, I'm cheering you on. I'll see you next time you.