Coordinating the moving parts of a nonprofit's fundraising calendar, you keep events, campaigns, mailings, and donor records running across the year. The operational layer that lets gift officers focus on relationships.
Most weeks tend to involve event production, campaign logistics, and database hygiene — venue calls for the gala, segmenting mailing lists for an appeal, reconciling pledge schedules in the CRM. You might find yourself building a run-of-show one day and pulling a constituent report the next. Throughput shows up in events delivered, appeals mailed, and clean donor records.
What's harder than people expect is how much hinges on data accuracy — a wrong salutation in a major-gift letter can be expensive, and a missed renewal cycle can lose a loyal donor. Variance across employers is wide: a large hospital foundation has specialized roles and big-event teams; a smaller nonprofit may have you running development, communications, and a piece of programs.
People who tend to thrive here have a producer's instinct for logistics and a hostess's instinct for donors. CFRE eligibility builds over years. The trade-off is evening and weekend events during peak season and the steady undercurrent of fundraising targets that always feel one quarter behind.
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Roles like this one sit within a broader occupational category. The numbers below reflect that full landscape — helpful for context, but your specific experience will depend on level, specialty, and where you work.
Roles with similar work and overlapping career paths
View all Business Operations roles →Coordinating the moving parts of a nonprofit's fundraising calendar, you keep events, campaigns, mailings, and donor records running across the year. The operational layer that lets gift officers focus on relationships.
Median pay for a Development Coordinator is about $86K nationally, with the field ranging roughly from $38K to $220K depending on experience, employer, and metro (BLS).
Core skills for this role include Speaking, Instructing, Learning Strategies, Speaking, and Learning Strategies.
Most people in this role hold a bachelor's degree.
Employment in this field is projected to grow about 6.97% through 2034, with roughly 587,500 people working in it today (BLS).
Closely related roles include Business Development Director, Application Development Director, and Management Consultant.
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