If you’re leading a major gifts team right now, there’s something important you need to pay attention to: Your best major gift officer may already be thinking about leaving, and you may not see it coming.
I’m not being dramatic.
At Veritus, we work with organizations of all sizes, and one of the most consistent challenges we see is turnover among front-line fundraisers. Leaders often assume people are leaving because of compensation, and while pay certainly matters, it’s rarely the whole story.
In fact, if you look at the research on why fundraisers quit, one reason rises to the top over and over again: They leave because of how they are managed.
I’ve believed this since the beginning of Veritus. One of the main reasons mid-level, major gift, and planned giving programs fail to reach their potential has very little to do with the talent of the fundraiser and almost everything to do with the structure and management surrounding them.
That means major gift officer retention is almost always a leadership problem.
Most MGOs Leave Because of the Environment, Not the Work
Let me be clear: Major gifts is hard work.
You’re building relationships with donors, navigating complex emotions, managing expectations internally, handling rejection, and trying to align donor passions with organizational needs. It requires emotional intelligence, patience, strategy, and resilience.
Most MGOs know that when they sign up for the job. What they don’t expect is having to do all of that inside a system that makes success nearly impossible.
Maybe they inherited a portfolio of 250 donors, many of whom aren’t even qualified for major gifts. Maybe they have aggressive revenue goals but no strategic donor offers to present. Maybe their CRM is messy, internal processes are clunky, and nobody seems able to fix anything. Or maybe the only time their manager reaches out is when numbers are behind.
That kind of environment slowly wears people down.
I’ve seen highly capable, deeply committed fundraisers begin questioning whether they’re cut out for the job, when in reality the problem wasn’t them at all. They were trying to succeed inside a broken system. And when that happens long enough, good people leave.
Poor Structure Creates Burnout Faster Than Almost Anything Else
One of the biggest contributors to burnout in major gifts is simply poor program design.
Major gifts is not something you can wing. A healthy major gift program needs structure—specifically, a qualified portfolio of no more than 150 donors, tiered appropriately, with a clear revenue goal attached to the caseload, along with a strategic plan for every donor.
Without that structure, everything becomes reactive. Instead of spending time deepening relationships, the fundraiser spends their days putting out fires. They chase unresponsive donors, scramble to meet deadlines, and bounce from task to task without clarity on what actually matters most. That’s exhausting and leads to inconsistency.
The truth is, when portfolios are too large or poorly qualified, MGOs stop functioning as relationship managers and start functioning as survival managers. They simply don’t have the time or capacity to do the thoughtful, personalized work that major gifts requires.
No amount of talent can fully compensate for bad structure.
Management Is About Support, Coaching, and Advocacy
This is where I think many organizations get it wrong. They think managing a fundraiser means checking revenue, reviewing pipeline numbers, and holding people accountable.
Accountability matters, of course. But that’s only part of the job. Great management means helping your people succeed.
That starts with communication.
As a leader, you see things your fundraisers don’t. You have visibility into program priorities, funding gaps, organizational shifts, and strategic opportunities. Your team needs that information—and they need it communicated consistently and clearly.
Great managers also remove barriers. If your MGO is struggling to get program information from finance, fighting through broken CRM workflows, or stuck waiting on other departments, those are leadership problems to solve.
And finally, you need to have your team’s back. Your fundraisers need to know you support them and should feel safe bringing challenges to you. They need to know that if a donor conversation goes badly or a strategy isn’t working, they can talk honestly without feeling judged.
That kind of trust changes everything.
At Veritus, one of the most important things we recommend is a weekly one-on-one between the manager and the MGO. Why? Because this is where coaching, communication, and strategy can all happen.
If You Want to Keep Great MGOs, Invest in Their Growth
Look, people stay where they feel valued, supported, and challenged to grow. That means professional development, training, and coaching matters.
When fundraisers are given opportunities to improve their skills and deepen their knowledge, they become more confident and more engaged in their work and start feeling capable and equipped.
This goes back to an obvious truth. Engaged employees are significantly less likely to leave than disengaged ones, especially in fundraising, where the work is deeply relational and emotionally demanding.
The bottom line is that MGOs want to do meaningful work, help donors experience joy in giving, and make a real impact on your mission. But they cannot do that well if they’re exhausted, isolated, and unsupported.
This is why Veritus exists. We started this company because we saw how poorly many non-profits were managing front-line fundraisers. The good news is that more leaders are waking up to this and recognizing that if they want better results, they need to build better systems.
When you have them, your donors stay. And your entire fundraising program gets stronger.