What happens when the person responsible for developing the team is also expected to compete for individual results?
A fundraiser is struggling. Their approaches aren’t working, their confidence has dropped and their numbers are behind. The team leader notices and steps away from their own fundraising to observe, listen and coach. Perhaps they conduct a one-on-one, help the fundraiser adjust their approach or simply spend enough time understanding what has gone wrong.
Eventually, the fundraiser improves. Their confidence returns and their numbers begin to move again. The coaching worked.
But while the fundraiser was improving their numbers, the team leader wasn’t building theirs.
In some face-to-face fundraising structures, that matters because the same person expected to develop the team may also be expected to achieve an individual fundraising target. If commission or income is tied to that target, helping someone else succeed can come at a personal financial cost.
It creates an uncomfortable question: What happens when the person responsible for developing the team is also competing with the team?
When Leadership and Production Collide
There is value in having a team leader who still fundraises. They understand what rejection feels like, remain connected to changing donor behaviour and can demonstrate good approaches rather than simply talking about them. A leader who understands the reality of the stand can have enormous credibility with a team.
But there is a difference between remaining connected to fundraising and being expected to operate simultaneously as a full fundraiser and a full team leader. Coaching takes time. So do one-on-ones, observation, conflict resolution, training new recruits, monitoring performance and rebuilding morale. Every hour spent doing those things is an hour that cannot also be spent approaching potential donors.
This becomes particularly complicated when the leader is a strong fundraiser. If their income depends heavily on personal production, the system naturally encourages them to keep doing what made them successful: fundraising. Yet leadership sometimes requires exactly the opposite. A leader may need to step away from a strong prospect and allow a developing fundraiser to try. They may need to spend thirty minutes coaching someone instead of chasing their own target.
These are not simply questions about whether someone is a good leader.
They are questions about incentives.
When Good Leadership Costs the Leader
Imagine the leader decides to prioritise development. They conduct regular one-on-ones, observe weaker fundraisers, coach people through difficulties, intervene when morale drops and spend time helping the team improve.
And it works.
The team’s numbers improve. A struggling fundraiser becomes productive. Someone who was losing confidence starts performing again. A new recruit settles into the role.
Those should be leadership successes.
But what happens if the leader’s own numbers fall in the process? What if the people they coached now earn more commission while the leader earns less because they spent fewer hours fundraising?
Suddenly, the organisation may have created a strange situation in which doing more of the leadership work can reduce the leader’s personal reward.
There is also a relationship issue. A leader who aggressively protects their own prospects may be perceived as competing with the team. Yet a leader who consistently sacrifices their own opportunities to develop everyone else may carry the financial consequences themselves.
Neither outcome is particularly sustainable.
How Should We Measure a Team Leader?
Individual fundraising is relatively easy to measure. If someone recruits ten donors, we can count ten donors.
Leadership is more complicated because its results often appear under somebody else’s name.
How do we value the one-on-one that helped a fundraiser recover from weeks of poor performance? What about the coaching that improved someone’s conversion rate, the new fundraiser who became productive, the conflict resolved before it damaged the team, or the fundraiser who stayed because someone took the time to develop them?
A leader may personally recruit fewer donors while helping several other people recruit more.
That does not mean personal numbers should disappear. Team leaders should remain connected to fundraising, and sometimes leading by example is exactly what the team needs. But organisations need to distinguish between a fundraiser who occasionally leads and a leader who is genuinely accountable for developing other people’s performance.
Those are different responsibilities.
What Does the Organisation Want From the Role?
Perhaps the real issue is role clarity. Is the team leader primarily a fundraiser who also helps colleagues, or are they responsible for team development while maintaining some fundraising activity?
There is no single compensation model that will work for every organisation. Some programmes may reduce individual targets for leaders, recognise team performance, provide leadership allowances, combine personal and team incentives, or create dedicated coaching time. Each approach has trade-offs.
The important principle is simpler:
The system should not consistently punish the behaviour the organisation says it wants.
If leaders are expected to coach, there must be space to coach. If they are expected to develop people, development must count as work. And if they are expected to build stronger teams, their performance cannot be understood only through what they personally produce.
Beyond the Pitch
Face-to-face fundraising will always need people who can produce. Targets matter, donors matter and income matters. But once someone becomes responsible for other people’s performance, the nature of their job changes.
Their contribution is no longer limited to the conversations they personally have. It can also be seen in the fundraiser who improves, the struggling team that stabilises, the new recruit who stays and the future leader who develops.
That is one of the strange things about good leadership: the better it becomes, the more its results may appear in somebody else’s numbers.
So perhaps the question isn’t whether team leaders should still fundraise. They should.
The question is whether our systems recognise the difference between producing results and leading people who produce results.
A fundraiser’s success can often be seen in their own numbers. A leader’s success may sometimes be seen in everyone else’s.
Reflections In Motion — Ideas. Insight. Impact.
Continue the Conversation
How should face-to-face fundraising organisations measure working team leaders? Should individual targets remain the same, or should coaching and team development form part of how leadership performance is recognised?
Share your experience in the comments.
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