How to Move from Grant Writer to Director of Development
If you’re a grant professional wondering how to move into a director of development role, you’re asking exactly the right question. And you’re not alone. I’ve had this conversation with several people over the last year.
The challenge is: there’s no real roadmap for this.
There are books on grants. Books on major gifts. Books on fundraising leadership in general. But I haven’t found anything that walks a grants-focused professional through the specific skills and knowledge needed to lead a full development operation. Which is wild, because it’s one of the most natural career paths in the sector.
So here’s my attempt to sketch one out, drawing on conversations I’ve had with practitioners and colleagues I trust deeply.
What You Already Have
Let me start with something that often gets overlooked: you’re not starting from scratch.
Grant professionals bring a lot to a development director role. You understand funder relationships. You know how to build a case for support, manage deadlines, and report on outcomes. You’re used to writing toward someone else’s priorities. That discipline completely translates.
You’ve also probably learned to navigate internal relationships, since grants rarely get written without cooperation from program staff. That cross-functional muscle matters more than most people realize.
What You’ll Need to Build
My colleague Heather Hill (a certified Quadrant 3 Leadership Coach and a fundraising consultant I respect enormously) put it simply: the transition isn’t impossible, but there are real knowledge gaps to close. Here’s her list:
- The Donor Life Cycle: Familiarity with the unique donor life cycle for different donor types.
- Giving Motivations: Understanding that individual donors give for very different reasons than institutional funders—the emotional drivers, timelines, and relationships are entirely different.
- Audience-Specific Cases for Support: The ability to develop a case for support for different audiences. The framing in a grant proposal is not how you’d frame a major donor proposal. At all.
- Segmented Impact Communication: Knowledge of how to communicate impact across donor segments. Foundations often want technical outcome data, while individual donors tend to respond to stories (or a mix of stories and stats).
- Fundraising Mechanics: Mastery of best practices in donor acquisition, cultivation, and stewardship.
- Annual Fundraising Plans: The ability to create a comprehensive annual fundraising plan that includes strategies for multiple donor segments, not just institutional.
- Data and Evaluation: Understanding of relevant KPIs (key performance indicators) and how to evaluate fundraising growth and gaps.
- Prospect Research: Knowledge of prospect research methods.
- Sector Trends: Awareness of broader trends in the sector.
You may not be doing all of this hands-on depending on the size of your team. But you need to understand it well enough to lead the people who are. Otherwise, as Heather says, the team ends up leading the director.
To that excellent list, I would add one more technical hurdle: budgeting. As a grant writer, you’re used to building project budgets. As a director, you have to learn how to manage the entire development department’s budget, forecast revenue, and understand cash flow.
The Leadership Dimension
In my conversations, I tell people there are actually two bodies of knowledge you need to develop. Fundraising knowledge is one. Leadership knowledge is the other. And they’re not the same thing.
One of the best major gift managers I’ve ever encountered had never done major gifts herself. What made her remarkable was that she didn’t try to clone her own (nonexistent) process. She’d sit with her major gift officers and ask, “Here’s your goal. What’s your path to get there? How can I support you?” She created space for them to own their work. She was a people developer who happened to be leading a fundraising team.
Chris Baiocchi, another Quadrant 3 Leadership Coach and skilled fundraising expert, flagged a few things I’d add to the leadership list:
- Build External Donor Experience Now: Start gaining experience with donor relationship building right away, even in your current grants role. Meeting with program officers to cultivate and steward those relationships? That’s practice.
- Foster Cross-Departmental Relationships: Work on your ability to build productive relationships between departments. Internal support for fundraising is often what makes or breaks a development operation.
- Practice Letting Go: Perhaps most importantly, start practicing delegation. If you move into a development director role, your relationship with grants has to change. The temptation to stay involved, to edit, or to rescue the process is real—but a successful director must release that control in order to grow into new skills
Chris is spot on here. On the cross-departmental relationship, I’d take it a step further: you specifically need to build relationships with the leaders of other departments. Those who will be your colleagues if you are promoted. You’ll need to have context for what the Finance Director or the Program Director sees as their concerns and to help them understand why you need data or how fundraising supports their goals. You need them as peers and allies.
And Chris’ last one is harder than it sounds. I know from experience that one of the hardest parts of delegation is resisting the urge to just do the thing yourself because it’s faster. But that’s not the job anymore. The job is getting it done through people.
Practical Steps to Get Ready
If you’re ready to get started, here are some steps to get you further on this path:
Read It’s Not Just About the Money by Jeff Schreifels and Richard Perry
It’s one of the best books I know on managing major gift officers. I’ve read it seven or eight times. It gives you a practical framework for understanding how major gift officers think, what they struggle to communicate, and how to create accountability without micromanaging.
Take a portfolio management approach to your one-on-ones
One thing that’s worked for people I coach is treating leadership relationships the way good major gift officers treat donor relationships. Who are you leading? What’s their goal? What month do you expect to see movement? That kind of clarity, tracked somewhere visible, creates peace of mind in the middle of a very busy job.
Build your professional learning network now
You’re probably already a member of the Grants Professional Association. Now you’ll need to look wider. Women in Development tends to be particularly strong for this kind of peer connection. AFP chapters vary, but they can give you a solid map of the areas you need to know. The people in those rooms have already solved most of what you’re facing. Ask them what they wish they’d known.
Ask your major gift colleagues where they get their education
You’ll get great suggestions of who really helps them. But don’t be surprised if they come up dry. I’m often shocked by how many fundraising professionals aren’t actively developing themselves. This field is well studied. The research on what works in this field is robust. We actually know a lot. Learning it doesn’t have to wait for a conference.
Track your time by category
As you’re taking on a larger scope, start looking at how your hours are actually distributed. Major gift oversight, grants, internal meetings, community relationships. That data is useful for your own clarity, and it’s powerful when you’re having conversations with leadership about capacity.
One More Thing
The transition from grants to development director isn’t just about doing what you do better. It’s a scope change and a leadership shift at the same time. It’s a big deal.
You’re not alone in feeling underprepared. Most people making this move feel that way, because the field hasn’t done a great job of building a clear pathway.
But the skills are learnable. The gaps are closeable. And the work you’ve already done has given you more of a foundation than you probably realize.
What’s your next step?
Want help thinking through your development leadership path? I’d encourage you to take the Leadership Style Quiz at ConcordLeadershipGroup.com/style — it’s a five-question tool that helps you understand your natural leadership style and where you might need to flex. And there’s a lot more on fundraising leadership at FundraisingCoach.com and The Nonprofit Academy.
