Last week, this insightful essay by development consultant Eddie Allen struck a chord with many of us in nonprofit leadership. As a former executive director of a small nonprofit with no development staff, I found it especially on point.

Nonprofits are chronically understaffed and underfunded. They are led by people who care enough about their communities to walk every extra mile so that everyone is cared for. Too often, that means staff members aren’t cared for themselves, and this includes fundraising staff. As Eddie notes, losing a fundraiser can cost an organization even more than losing another team member because the best fundraisers put relationships first. Ideally, you have a strong CRM (constituent relationship management) system, and your staff consistently document their interactions with every constituent. That helps enormously during a fundraising transition, but it can’t replace the trust that person has built directly with your donors.

I recently worked with a client who was recruiting a new development director. They had put together an impressive job description, and as a former executive director, I would have loved to find someone who could accomplish everything on that ambitious list! Donor relations, marketing, database management, strategy, board support: you name it, it was part of the plan. All of it is important and needed for a growing nonprofit, and the mission cannot happen without the money. But after a heart-to-heart conversation, my client and I narrowed the position to more realistic first steps. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither is a strong fundraising operation!

We also made sure the job description spelled out the work the executive director and board would carry to support the overall fundraising effort. As Joan Garry says (and Eddie Allen reiterates), “fundraising is a team sport.” Even if you could find someone to fill a unicorn job, results would suffer if the team around the new development director didn’t see themselves as part of the effort. And you don’t want to extinguish a promising new hire’s enthusiasm and goodwill by giving them an impossible job.

What is the single most important element of your fundraising strategy? Building donor relationships. It is dangerous to the health of your organization when those relationships belong to one person and all the knowledge lives in that person’s head. A healthy, well-used CRM takes care of much of the rote work so that a lean fundraising team can focus on relationships and strategy. Are your systems carrying the load so your staff can do what matters most?