National Nonprofit Day 2024: Celebrating the People Who Power the Mission

August 17 is National Nonprofit Day, a day to champion organizations that work for social good over the bottom line.

There are more than 1.5 million nonprofits in the United States. After retail and manufacturing, the nonprofit sector is the third largest workforce in the United States economy. One in ten people in the U.S. work at a nonprofit organization. Nonprofits raise hundreds of billions of dollars each year to make a difference in the lives of their constituents.

Omatic has a close connection to the nonprofit community, working with more than 3,000 organizations for the past 20 years. Throughout this time, we learned about the behind-the-scenes effort required to make social good a reality. Today, we want to champion the people at nonprofits who make it all possible.

What you know (and don’t know) about the people who make it happen

If you work for a nonprofit, you’re most likely aware of how your team’s efforts contribute to the organization’s overall mission. But how much do you know about what your colleagues do? Behind every successful giving day, volunteering event, or direct mail campaign, there are many teams you work with every day who transform donor dollars into meaningful impact.  

Let’s look at what’s well-known and not-so-well-known about the people who power the mission of nonprofits, team by team:  

Database Administrators (DBAs) 

Who are they?  Database administrators manage the data and systems needed for effective fundraising, reporting, and more.

What you may not know: A database administrator is responsible for maintaining the integrity and freshness of data at an organization. Sound simple? It’s not! More than 80% of nonprofits report having three or more platforms essential to daily functions (think fundraising, event management, communications, etc.) in addition to a CRM. If systems aren’t integrated, data management can involve hours of painstaking data entry. Or, more frequently, hours of spreadsheet manipulation and data de-duping. High volume giving campaigns (like a giving day or annual auction) can keep data professionals at nonprofits busy for weeks—even months—after the fact.  

Development Officers 

Who are they? These are the frontline fundraisers of an organization. Some roles include directors of development, development coordinators, major gifts and principal gift officers, annual giving officers, and constituent giving team members. These are the professionals who create proposals and programs to ensure nonprofits have the funds required to carry out the mission. Major gifts and principal gifts officers focus on securing large gifts, while annual and constituent giving teams focus on larger quantities of smaller gifts.

What you may not know: Identifying, meeting, learning about, and building a relationship with a major gift donor can take months, sometimes years. When annual and major giving is well coordinated, a donor has been giving small amounts over the years until they can be approached for a major gift.  

The education and cultivation involved in securing a large donation keeps development officers busy. If a development colleague seems like they have a glamorous life of lunches and galas—don’t be fooled. Development officers work tirelessly to know donors well enough to propose a gift that will meet the needs of an organization and the inclinations of a donor. 

Donor Relations 

Who are they? Donor relations and stewardship teams manage the activities designed to inform, thank, and retain donors. They often lead acknowledgment processes for first-time and milestone gifts, manage donor walls, and carry out annual reporting for an institution’s endowment. 

What you may not know: Donor Relations teams can be the catch-all department for donor inquiries. If a donor wants to know the exact location of a memorial bench with a plaque in tribute to their grandmother, make an endowed fund for the maintenance of a hospital garden, or find out which undergraduate received the scholarship they funded this year, your friendly donor relations staff members are often the ones fielding these requests.  

The variety of requests a donor relations team receives makes access to institutional data crucial. One inquiry may involve accessing a gift receipt from decades ago, a catalog of the tribute plaques on a campus, a current student’s records, or gift agreement policies. Without a centralized place for all this information, donor relations staff often spend a lot of time bouncing between several different systems just to research and respond to complicated requests. 

Event Management 

Who are they? Events are an important way to raise awareness about an organization and promote fundraising. Nonprofits may host galas, auctions, or other key events to celebrate and further the mission among supporters. Events staff make these events possible by planning all aspects of a soiree from soup to nuts (literally!), and thinking through the details of speakers, programs, awards, auctions, and more. 

What you may not know: Events staff are the ultimate planners. They know vendors, make budgets, develop run of show programs, and create backup plans for all contingencies. A great event manager is ready for speaker no-shows, inclement weather, audio/visual equipment difficulties—and other hiccups without breaking a sweat.  

Event staff must be expert data wranglers. They manage attendee information including diet restrictions, guest names, and put together complicated seating charts. They must be experts at using volunteer management platforms, payment solutions, and accounts payable systems to arrange staffing, secure reimbursements, and earn ticket revenue to make an event a success. 

Finance 

Who are they? Nonprofits often have at least one staff member dedicated to the financial management of an organization, including a CFO, controller, foundation accountant, or bookkeeper. 

What you may not know: In addition to overseeing the annual budget for an organization, the finance team is responsible for submitting forms and IRS filings. It’s important work: errors in filings can jeopardize an organization’s nonprofit status. Finance teams spend a lot of time working with other teams getting the data they need to ensure reporting for audits, endowment donors, and annual reports are as accurate as possible. They must know how donor funding is used, the impact of that funding, and ensure expenditures align with a fund’s stated purpose to keep in good standing with donors, regulators, and the community.  

Marketing and Communications 

Who are they? Usually separate from the development staff, marketing and communications teams oversee the external messaging and advertising of the nonprofit. Their concerns are sharing the mission and impact with as wide of an audience as possible. 

What you may not know: Marketing a nonprofit is just as demanding as marketing at a for-profit company. Marketing professionals promote an organization’s mission to the public, explain its impact, and advertise its programs. They also compete with for-profit companies for exposure in the media, in advertisements, and on social media with a fraction of the budget. Tighter budgets lead to more scrutiny on spending—a nonprofit marketer must keep detailed account of their spending, target their audiences, and show the return on their organization’s investment.  

Nonprofit marketers track every activity to see how it impacts event visits, donations, and volunteering. They work hard to ensure they’re using the most up-to-date constituent records so that they aren’t sending multiple communications to the same constituent, sending multiple people in the same household a mailer, or sending incorrect information. For marketers – better data leads to better results.  

Prospect Research 

Who are they? Research teams learn essential facts about prospective donors so development officers can be more effective. 

What you may not know: Prospect researchers go beyond website bios and LinkedIn profiles to find out important facts, like that the donor you’re speaking with is the cousin of last year’s annual gala featured speaker, that they met their spouse at one of your nonprofit’s events, or what sports they played in college—anything that might make a future solicitation more personal.  

Prospect researchers deal in data and rely on accurate biographical information for their research. Once they have gathered information, they meticulously track it in the CRM: linking donor records with other constituents, adding wealth metrics, and making recommendations for solicitations based on known giving behavior.  

Volunteer Engagement 

Who are they? These are the team members at a nonprofit who facilitate volunteer experiences and workflows. They will set expectations for volunteers, schedules, and facilitate outreach.  

What you may not know: Volunteer managers must have superb people skills.  Not all volunteering positions are easy. And not all people who sign up to volunteer are suited for it. Despite this, volunteer managers make sure volunteers have a meaningful experience with the organization. A great volunteer manager understands the skill sets of their volunteers and uses diplomacy to get the right people in the right roles—to ensure future support.

In addition to serious people skills, volunteer managers need to have a solid grasp of their organization’s data: using volunteer management platforms to track who they’ve worked with, leveraging peer-to-peer fundraising tools, digging into events management platforms for large gatherings, and after all that they must add detailed contact reports into a CRM for future volunteer stewardship. It’s a balancing act! 

Leadership 

Who are they? Nonprofits have a governing body, often a board of directors, who sign off on high-level strategic decisions. A full-time leader—usually a CEO or President—will carry out the strategic decisions of the board and oversee all other staff. 

What you may not know: Hard work and a commitment to the mission are not enough to run a nonprofit alone. The best leaders use data to inform strategic decisions, analyzing information from development, marketing, events, stewardship, and finance teams to set the goals and tactics of the organization. Nonprofit leaders must have a wide range of skill sets including public speaking, fundraising, public relations, financial knowledge, tech awareness, and political expertise to keep an organization functioning. For many nonprofit leaders, no two days are the same. 

These are just some of the common responsibilities involved in the day-to-day management of a nonprofit, but there are more. Some nonprofits have a single person overseeing two, three, or more of the functions listed here. What is consistent across each organization is that each team is doing their best to build stronger relationships with supporters and drive mission impact.  

Next time you go into the office, take a moment to thank and appreciate your team members and colleagues for their hard work—and let them know it’s not going unnoticed!  

On National Nonprofit Day, let’s give a hand to the people working behind the scenes to make it all possible—they deserve it!