by Adam M. Doyno, MPA, CFRE - Executive Director and Chief Development Officer, CUNY School of Public Health Foundation
A brief LinkedIn search reveals an unusually active market for chief development officers across New York. At the time of writing, bedrock organizations including United Way of New York City, Sesame Workshop, New York Public Radio, HELP USA, Partnership with Children, and many others are seeking senior fundraising leadership. Executive turnover is inevitable, and every transition has its own circumstances. But the concentration of open positions raises a question our profession should confront: Why has sustained fundraising leadership become so difficult to achieve?
Today's chief development officer operates amid extraordinary uncertainty. Changes in federal funding are pressuring nonprofit business models. Federal actions targeting diversity, equity, and inclusion have affected organizations and programs. Political attitudes toward many communities nonprofits exist to serve have shifted. Changes to federal tax policy are altering longstanding benefits surrounding charitable giving and endowments. Fundraisers are being asked to raise more private capital as other revenue sources become less certain, sometimes while representing missions that have themselves become politically contested.
The underlying fundraising market presents another challenge. American charitable giving reached a record $617.2 billion in 2025, yet the number of donors declined 3.6 percent, continuing a downward trend that began in 2021. Overall donor retention was just 43.3 percent. Earlier 2025 data showed that donors giving between $1 and $100—57 percent of all donors—declined by 11.1 percent.
We are, in other words, raising more money from fewer people while retaining fewer than half of prior-year donors.
Yet expectations for fundraising growth have hardly diminished. Boards need balanced budgets. CEOs need resources to sustain and expand programs. Organizations need major gifts, institutional support, campaigns, annual giving, and new donors. The chief development officer sits at the intersection of those pressures, responsible for generating increasingly consequential revenue in an increasingly complicated environment.
The most current research - from 2022 - suggests the picture is more complicated than the oft-repeated claim that fundraisers leave every 18 months. Research from Indiana University’s Lilly Family School of Philanthropy found that U.S. fundraisers reported a mean tenure of 3.6 years in their current positions and a median tenure of two years, and 20 percent said they intended to leave their current organization within the following year.
More troubling is what we do not know. There appears to be no current, widely cited national dataset focused specifically on chief development officer tenure, turnover, vacancy duration, reasons for departure, or the organizational conditions associated with retention. For a role responsible for one of the nonprofit sector’s most consequential functions, that lack of data should concern us. We cannot meaningfully diagnose a leadership retention problem—or distinguish ordinary executive mobility from a systemic problem—without measuring it.
Fundraising is a long-term enterprise. Donor relationships mature over years. Major gift pipelines require sustained cultivation. Institutional partnerships depend upon trust. High-performing development teams require investment and stability. When boards respond to short-term revenue pressure by repeatedly changing fundraising leadership, they risk disrupting the relationships and strategies that underpin future revenue.
Patience, therefore, is not an excuse for poor performance; it is part of responsible governance. Boards should expect clear strategies, measurable progress, and accountability. They should also assess whether pipelines are growing, relationships are deepening, retention is improving, board members are becoming more engaged, and the infrastructure necessary for sustainable philanthropy is being built. Before concluding that the fundraiser is the problem, organizational leaders should ask whether they have created the conditions necessary for fundraising success.
The consequences of instability extend beyond today's revenue. They threaten tomorrow's leadership.
Fundraising remains, in important ways, an apprenticeship profession. Experienced leaders teach younger professionals how to cultivate donors, navigate difficult conversations, work with board members, develop strategy, and exercise judgment that no textbook or webinar can fully impart. When senior fundraising leadership continually turns over, that developmental chain is interrupted. Emerging professionals lose mentors, organizations lose institutional knowledge, and the profession weakens its own leadership pipeline.
If younger fundraisers see senior roles characterized by extraordinary expectations, insufficient resources, organizational impatience, and short tenure, we should not assume they will aspire to those positions—or be prepared to assume them when the opportunity arrives. We cannot build the next generation of fundraising leadership without sustaining the current one.
AFP Global advocates on federal charitable giving policy, invests in research, supports mentorship and scholarships, and regularly collects data about the fundraising workforce. But we still lack contemporary research focused specifically on the tenure and turnover of chief development officers. That is an evidence gap our profession should no longer accept.
We need a study of senior fundraising leadership: how long CDOs stay, why they leave, how long positions remain vacant, what organizational conditions predict retention, and what turnover costs organizations in lost relationships, stalled pipelines, staff departures, and revenue. AFP-NYC can help bring CEOs, trustees, search firms, and fundraisers into that work and translate the findings into better practice.
Research alone, of course, will not retain fundraising leaders. Organizations will have to act on what it tells us. Boards and CEOs should examine whether their expectations, resources, governance, and timelines actually create the conditions in which fundraising leaders can succeed. Fundraisers themselves should be willing to identify the practices that drive talented colleagues from organizations—and the ones that persuade them to stay.
The first step, however, is knowing the scope of the problem. At a moment when nonprofits need private philanthropy more than ever, we should know whether the leaders responsible for generating it are being given a reasonable chance to succeed. And if they are not, our profession should be prepared not merely to document that reality, but to change it. This is our moment to study and understand the problem, and then to lead in creating a solution.
Adam M. Doyno, CFRE, is the Founding Executive Director of the CUNY SPH Foundation and the Inaugural Chief Development Officer of the CUNY Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy, where since 2018 he has built and led the school’s comprehensive fundraising enterprise. He has been a driving force in advancing CUNY SPH’s growth as an independent, accredited, and nationally recognized public health institution, securing philanthropic support that expands access and opportunity for students and communities across New York City. Previously, he held senior development roles at FPWA, the National Kidney Foundation, and United Way of New York City, leading donor-centered strategies across local and national platforms. Adam is an active nonprofit leader, serving on the Board of Directors of the Association of Fundraising Professionals–NYC Chapter, the Harmony Health Foundation, and the 125th Street Business Improvement District, and has been recognized for his contributions to the field with multiple professional honors.
