In Mel Brooks' Blazing Saddles, Lili Von Shtupp sings "I'm Tired." Tired of performing. Tired of being used up and undervalued. Tired of having all the power and none of the credit.

If that doesn't describe the average development director, I don't know what does.

March is Women's History Month. It's also the month I find myself thinking about the nonprofit sector's most persistent challenge: women do most of the work that keeps this sector running, and are paid like that's fine.

Well, it’s not fine. 

The Nonprofit Workforce: Women Do Most of It

Start with the basic numbers. Women make up approximately 75% of the nonprofit workforce. Fundraising, program delivery, administration, and executive leadership at smaller organizations - the sector runs on women's labor.

The compensation doesn't match. Women earn around 25% less than men in the nonprofit sector, according to research by the National Council of Nonprofits. Candid's 2024 Nonprofit Compensation Report, which analyzed data from more than 128,000 tax-exempt organizations, found the gender pay gap in CEO compensation persists - particularly at organizations with larger budgets. 

And for women of color, the gap is wider. Black women earned 66.5 cents per dollar that white men earned. Latinas earned 58 cents - a gap of 42%, more than twice the average for all women. Those disparities hold across education levels, occupation groups, and states. Credentials and experience don't close them.

The Leadership Gap: A Sector with More Work to Do

Despite women making up 75% of nonprofit workers, only 22% of nonprofits are led by a woman executive director or CEO. Only 42% of nonprofit boards are chaired by women, and that number drops to 33% at organizations with incomes of $25 million or more. 

The nonprofit sector exists, in many cases, to advance equity in the communities it serves. Closing the gap internally is part of that work too - and it's worth naming that openly.

There's a term for what happens in female-dominated fields: the glass escalator. Men in female-dominated occupations often rise faster and more smoothly to leadership than women - not always because of individual decisions, but because of systemic dynamics and gender stereotypes that fast-track men even when the pool of qualified women is deep.

In fundraising specifically, this plays out in compensation benchmarks, job descriptions, and who gets taken seriously in a salary negotiation.

Development Directors: The Specific Case

Development directors are worth examining because it is here that the fundraising capacity crisis and pay equity converge.

The development director role is overwhelmingly held by women. It is also chronically underpaid relative to the revenue it generates and the complexity it requires. Organizations often budget for development staff at the low end of what the market will bear, and then face repeated turnover cycles that cost more in the long run.

Nearly 1 in 3 nonprofits struggle with retention and turnover, and 59% reported to Social Current that it was significantly harder to fill staff positions in 2024 than in previous years. Meanwhile, 55% cite the inability to offer competitive salaries as a significant challenge.

That challenge lands hardest on roles disproportionately held by women.

What This Costs Organizations

Underpaying development staff is not a budget strategy. It's a false economy.

Research on nonprofit compensation notes that a sizable gender pay gap can affect the sector's long-term vitality - when women perceive compensation practices to be unfair, they may step back from leadership roles altogether, which costs nonprofits experienced managers and talent at exactly the moment the sector needs them most.

When a development director leaves, the organization loses donor relationships, institutional knowledge, and fundraising momentum. The cost of a search, onboarding time, and the dip in performance while someone new gets up to speed almost always exceeds what a market-rate salary would have cost to begin with.

What Women's History Month Is Asking of This Sector

The ask is practical. Benchmark your compensation honestly - against current market data, not what you paid three years ago. If your development director manages donor relationships, writes grants, stewards major donors, and keeps your organization financially stable, pay her accordingly. If she's a woman of color doing all of that, the data suggests she may be earning even less. That's a gap organizations have the power to close.

Lili Von Shtupp was tired of performing for an audience that took her for granted. She deserved better. So do the women running development offices across this sector - and the good news is, the fix is actually within reach.

Last year tested everyone in ways we didn't expect. For many in the nonprofit sector, 2025 felt relentless. Friends and colleagues faced similar upheaval alongside personal losses and mounting burnout. As members of the sandwich generation, we found ourselves managing multiple family members who needed more attention in different ways than they had before.

Watching people I care about struggle was trying. This year didn't require explanation to anyone who lived through it. Everyone deserved the grace to get through with as little damage as possible.

Here's what organizations forget during challenging times: your volunteers, board members, and donors are navigating all of this while choosing to support your mission. They're whole people with jobs, families, health challenges, and stress you'll never fully know about. How you treat them during both ordinary times and crisis moments determines whether they stay engaged or quietly step back.

When Organizations Get It Right: Volunteer Appreciation That Builds Long-Term Engagement

Two organizations taught me what genuine appreciation looks like in practice, and both lessons came more than a decade apart.

Over 20 years ago, I started volunteering with a healthcare access organization. Within my first few months, my grandfather and my ex's grandfather both died within weeks of each other. The organization sent condolence cards. They told me to take my time returning to the schedule. They checked in on me as a person, not because they needed me back for coverage.

I hadn't donated a penny yet. They simply saw me as human first, volunteer second.

The program leadership changed over the years, but that culture stayed consistent. I'm still volunteering with them because they recognize that the work demands emotional investment alongside time. The role involves navigating high-stress situations regularly and supporting people during vulnerable moments. I keep showing up because the organization demonstrates we're in this together. That's a relationship I've valued for over two decades, and it's shaped how I think about volunteer management ever since.

More recently, a giving circle I am considering joining told prospective members upfront: "You can be as involved as you want to be, and we expect that to change over time." That transparency is refreshing in a sector that often treats fluctuating capacity as a sign of commitment failure. This group acknowledges that life circumstances shift. They build flexibility into their model rather than demanding consistent participation regardless of what members are managing in their personal lives. That's one of many reasons I'll be getting more involved with them this year.

The Board Member Burden: Board Member Engagement and Volunteer Retention Strategies

Nonprofits need to think about flexibility when it comes to boards. Board members are volunteers who take on legal liability and governance responsibilities by choice. We've become rigid about ensuring board members deliver the seven T's: time, talent, treasure, ties, testimony, tenacity, and whatever seventh T you prefer. When organizations expect all of those consistently and simultaneously without acknowledging that board members are whole people with lives beyond your mission, the eighth T becomes "Take me away!" as that old Calgon commercial declared.

I've held volunteer programs at other nonprofits to that same standard ever since my early experience. It's probably too high a bar for most organizations. But that first organization understood something fundamental: volunteering wasn't just about donating hours. It was an emotional investment requiring support and genuine appreciation, not performative gratitude.

How We Can Do Better: Sustainable Nonprofit Volunteer and Board Management Practices

From an organizational perspective, building flexibility into volunteer and board structures is no longer optional. The sector faces unprecedented turnover as people leave nonprofit work entirely or move between organizations in search of better conditions. People are exhausted. Your volunteers and board members face the same pressures as your staff. They're managing caregiving responsibilities, job uncertainty, health challenges, and burnout while trying to show up for your mission.

Create explicit flexibility frameworks rather than treating capacity changes as failures. The giving circle model I mentioned works because expectations are transparent from the start. Tell board members and volunteers what you need, when engagement levels can flex, and how to communicate when life demands their attention elsewhere temporarily.

Leadership staff need to check in without asking for something. Those condolence cards mattered because they came with zero strings attached. Personal connection strengthens relationships more than constant requests for participation or contributions. When someone on your board or in your volunteer corps is managing a crisis, checking in as a human rather than as an organizational representative makes all the difference.

Board perspectives matter too. If you're serving on a board, feeling overwhelmed or confused by expectations, name that reality with your fellow board members and executive leadership. The organizations that retain engaged boards are the ones where honest conversations about capacity happen before people quietly resign.

For consultants and fractional professionals like me, this means building capacity awareness into every engagement. When I work with organizations on fundraising strategy or board development, we talk about sustainable practices given actual resources. Implementing systems that acknowledge humans have limits creates conditions where both staff and volunteers can succeed.

Why This Matters Now: Building Lasting Relationships with Nonprofit Volunteers and Donors

This year will bring challenges we can't predict. The nonprofits building lasting relationships with volunteers, board members, and donors will be the ones treating them as whole people navigating complex lives. Show genuine appreciation, not performative gratitude. Check in personally without an agenda. Build flexibility into expectations instead of treating temporary capacity shifts as failures. Recognize that everyone's engagement will ebb and flow based on circumstances beyond your organization's control.

When I think about peace, progress, and joy as values guiding my work in 2026, treating people as whole humans sits at the center of all three. Peace comes from sustainable relationships rather than transactional ones. Progress requires acknowledging that capacity changes over time. Joy emerges when people feel genuinely valued for who they are, not just what they contribute to your mission.

Let's be sure to show our volunteers, board members, and donors love and genuine appreciation. And if you're volunteering your time and expertise, extend that same grace to yourself. Love is peace. Love makes progress. Love brings joy.

I'm in a go-with-the-flow mode right now, taking the spirit of the season of renewal seriously. But I don't do resolutions, and I don't do intentions. They both feel too soft for me. I set goals, and this year I'm grounding them in the values I'll be focusing on in 2026: peace, progress, and joy. For me and the people around me - family, friends, clients, colleagues.

This is also the time of year to consider what to keep, what to bring on, and what to move away from. Keeping doesn't mean keeping it the same. If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always gotten. It means keep it, but evolve. Progress.

Progress doesn't mean all new. It can mean moving beyond or away from. Because, frankly, if you're impeding my progress or your own, you're not bringing me or yourself joy. We'll be parting ways soon. So let me be clear about where I'm putting my energy in 2026.

What Sustainable Nonprofit Management Looks Like

I'm keeping my commitment to practical, capacity-appropriate guidance for small nonprofits, but evolving how I deliver it. For years, I've watched organizations chase industry "best practices" designed for shops with full development teams. A solo fundraiser trying to implement the same stewardship timeline as a five-person department isn't demonstrating excellence - they're heading toward burnout.

This evolution shows up in my fractional fundraising work constantly. When a client says, "We know we should be doing X," my first question is always, "Says who?" If the answer is "best practices" or "that's what big organizations do," we're having the wrong conversation. The right question is: what does your organization need, given your actual capacity and donor base? Automated email receipts sent immediately beat handwritten notes delayed three months. A simple three-metric dashboard you actually use beats comprehensive analytics you never open.

I'm bringing on more explicit advocacy for sustainable fundraising practices and stronger organizational leadership. The sector faces both a staffing crisis and a problem with management, governance, and systems.

According to the 2025 Social Impact Staff Retention survey, 67% of nonprofit employees plan to seek new jobs this year, with arts and culture organizations facing a potential exodus of 92%. The top reason? Too much responsibility without adequate support. We keep talking about staff retention in nonprofits without changing the conditions creating the crisis.

Executive directors need to make hard choices about what not to do. Boards need to understand that their role extends beyond meeting attendance to include active advocacy for the mission through thoughtful engagement. Organizations need to build systems that support staff rather than overwhelm them. Leadership clarity about organizational priorities creates the conditions for success.

Why Fractional Support Builds Capacity

This connects directly to why fractional professionals are a great fit for nonprofit organizations. When an organization brings me in for grant writing or transition management, we're not just accomplishing those tasks - we're building nonprofit capacity by reducing overwhelming workload and creating breathing room for existing staff to focus on relationship-building. Peace comes from sustainable systems. Progress requires adequate support. Joy emerges when people can focus their energy on work that matters instead of constantly operating in crisis mode.

I'm moving away from working with organizations that view their team as interchangeable parts rather than humans with limits. When a prospective client tells me they need someone to "raise $500K in six months" but can't articulate their donor pipeline, their board's engagement level, or what specific need the funding addresses - that's a red flag. When organizations expect consultants to work on commission or "volunteer time until we raise money," they're signaling they don't value fundraising as professional work requiring expertise and strategy. I'm moving away from these situations because they impede progress for everyone involved.

Strategic Choices for Small Nonprofit Leaders

Small nonprofit management faces particular pressure to do everything everyone else is doing. Limited capacity means saying no becomes a strategic necessity, not a luxury. When you're running development solo or with minimal staff, you can't compete on the same playing field as organizations with full teams. You compete by being smarter about where you focus energy.

This means keeping donor stewardship but evolving it to match your capacity. It means bringing on board engagement strategies that deliver real help rather than performative involvement. It means moving away from fundraising trends designed for organizations with resources you don't have.

The strongest small nonprofits I work with have learned to ask: Does this serve our mission, given our actual resources? If yes, how do we do it sustainably? If no, what do we do instead? That's the peace, progress, and joy approach in action.

This is how I'm approaching 2026 - with clear values guiding hard choices about where to invest my time and energy. When you ground your decisions in what actually matters, you give yourself permission to keep what works while letting go of what doesn't. You create space for progress that serves your mission and your team. The sector needs more of us to make these intentional decisions about sustainable nonprofit management.