Your Fundraising Person is Not a Magician
By Laura Ede
Let me say something that will make some fundraising teams feel SEEN…and make some programme teams uncomfortable.
Your fundraising person is not a magician.
They cannot pull grants out of thin air for work that isn’t properly documented, monitored, evaluated, or reported. They cannot pitch impact they can’t prove. They cannot close a funder who asks a programme question, and nobody picks up the phone.
Yet, somehow, in many nonprofits, the fundraising/partnerships team is expected to carry the organisation’s entire financial survival, while every other department operates as if they’re in a completely separate building.
Let’s talk about it.
Here’s what funders actually buy when they give you money.
They buy your track record. Your data. Your stories. Your systems. Your team’s credibility. Your organisational culture.
None of that lives in the fundraising department.
The M&E team holds the numbers. The programme team holds the implementation stories. The communications team holds the narrative. Finance holds the accountability trail. Leadership holds the vision. Admin holds the compliance receipts.
Fundraising just assembles the case and walks it to the door.
So, if your M&E data is weak, the case is weak. If your programme team can’t articulate what they actually do, the case is weak. If your communications team hasn’t been documenting impact, the case is weak. If finance can’t produce clean reports, the case is weak, AND the proposal might not even get scored.
You cannot dress up a silo and call it a strong proposal.
Why does everyone dump it all on fundraising though?
Honestly? Because money is visible and everything else feels internal. When salaries don’t come, nobody blames the M&E officer. When a grant is declined, everybody side-eyes the partnerships person. The accountability is lopsided because the output…the money… is lopsided in terms of visibility.
But here’s the uncomfortable truth: underfunded organisations are often under-documented organisations. The fundraising problem is often a programme-quality problem. A data problem. A storytelling problem. A leadership coherence problem.
The fundraiser is just the last person holding the bag.
What does it actually look like when everyone pulls weight?
- Programmes deliver well AND document what they’re delivering.
- M&E tracks outcomes AND communicates findings in usable language.
- Communications captures stories AND keeps an asset library that fundraising can actually use.
- Finance produces timely, clean reports AND flags compliance risks early.
- Leadership articulates a clear strategy AND shows up for conversations with funders.
- Admin ensures procurement, HR, and governance are tight… because funders do due diligence.
When all of that is happening, the fundraiser walks into a pitch with evidence, confidence and receipts. When none of that is happening, the fundraiser walks into a pitch with a prayer and a very long proposal that says a lot of things that sound nice but prove nothing.
Fundraising is the tip of the organisational iceberg.
What funders see is the pitch deck, the proposal narrative, the introductory call. What’s holding that up is 18 months of programme data, field photos that nobody thought to archive, a monitoring framework that was actually followed, a finance team that could produce a budget variance report without being begged, and a programme officer who could speak to outcomes without reading from a script.
The fundraiser didn’t build any of that. They just needed it to exist.
The ask isn’t glamorous, but it’s real.
Document your work like someone’s grant depends on it…because it does.
Feed your fundraising team. Give them stories. Give them numbers. Give them programme updates. Invite them into implementation so they understand what you do. Show up for funder site visits. Answer their questions before the deadline, not after.
Fundraising is a team sport wearing one jersey.
The sooner your organisation recognises this, the sooner one person stops burning out while everyone else stays comfortable.
(Laura Ede is a Nigerian nonprofit professional and author of “From Grant Zero to Hero: How To Make Funders Say Yes”)
