“We Hired One Person to Handle It All” – Said Right Before Everything Caught Fire

If I had a dollar for every time I met an executive director juggling fundraising, grant writing, marketing, donor stewardship, event planning, and, oh yeah, running the whole dang organization... I’d probably never need to write another grant again.

And sometimes, instead of trying to do it all themselves, they hand it off to one person.

“One person oversees all fundraising.”

Okay...

“And marketing.”

Hmmm.

“And grant writing.”

HARD STOP. Absolutely not.

Let me be blunt: that’s not capacity-building. Nor is it a development or marketing strategy. That’s blatantly setting someone up to fail, as well as yourself.

Trust me, I get it. Budgets are tight, and you’re doing your best. But the truth is, leadership isn’t about doing everything yourself, and you don’t build a strong, sustainable nonprofit by maxing out one person’s job description and hoping they don’t burn out or bounce.

Instead, you’re building a very expensive game of burnout Jenga, and it’s gonna fall. Fast.

That’s why I’m sharing one of my favorite quotes today:

"Great leaders are not the best at everything. They find people who are the best at different things and get them all on the same team." - Eileen Bistrisky

Because it’s a reminder: the best leaders build a team. Not a one or two-person panic department.

At Jorden Anderson Consulting, we don’t “just write grants.”

We’re here to make sure the whole damn structure holds up. We’ll help you build systems. Clean up your data. Tighten your story. And we will clean up that budget, because ‘winging it’ is not a recognized accounting method.

So if your fundraising strategy currently looks like:

• One exhausted person wearing 17 hats

• No narrative consistency

• A folder titled “Grant Stuff (USE THIS ONE?)"

• Hope as the made strategy

Let's talk!

You don’t have to do this alone, and your team shouldn’t have to either.