When Teams Get Smaller, Strengths Matter More: Building a Strengths-Based Donor Relations Team
When there are fewer people to do the work, asking everyone to simply do more is not a strategy. Understanding what people do best, and intentionally building the work around those strengths, can help donor relations teams work more effectively without losing the human connection at the center of philanthropy.
There is a lot of angst in our profession right now.
Teams are smaller. Budgets are tight. Expectations have not necessarily decreased. We are navigating shifting donor behavior, leadership transitions, new technologies, political and economic uncertainty, and an ever-growing number of communication channels. Meanwhile, our work still needs to be done. Gifts must be acknowledged. Donors need to understand their impact. Reports have deadlines. Events are on the calendar. Gift officers need support. Leadership wants data. And everyone would like more personalization.
That pressure is evident in the workforce. Gallup's State of the Global Workplace 2026 found that only 31% of employees in the United States and Canada were engaged at work in 2025, and half reported significant daily stress. In the fundraising profession specifically, AFP noted in 2025 that a survey conducted with The Chronicle of Philanthropy found that 84% of fundraisers reported tremendous pressure to succeed, while 75% of nonprofit leaders said burnout was affecting their organization's ability to achieve its mission.
So, maybe the question is not: How do we get people to do more?
Perhaps it is: How do we help people do more of what they do best?
We personalize for donors. Why not for our teams?
As donor relations professionals, we talk constantly about personalization and individualization.
We know donors are not interchangeable. We increasingly use donor behavior, interests, communication preferences, engagement history, and feedback to determine what should happen next, rather than assuming every donor needs the same experience. DRG's donor experience framework reminds us that knowing must precede strategy, and behavior-based donor relations challenges us to focus on what donors actually do rather than relying solely on gift amount or traditional segmentation.
Yet internally, we sometimes do the opposite.
We create job descriptions with enormous lists of responsibilities. When someone leaves, their work is divided among those who remain. A new project appears, and we ask, "Who has room?" rather than, "Who is naturally equipped for this?" Eventually, everyone does a little bit of everything, and often no one spends enough time on the work where they are most energized and effective. A strengths-based approach asks us to individualize the people doing the work, too.
CliftonStrengths© defines talent as a naturally recurring pattern of thinking, feeling, or behavior that can be applied productively. T
alent becomes a strength when we intentionally invest knowledge and skill in it. In other words:
Talent + investment = strength.
The goal is not to label people or decide who is "good" or "bad" at something. Strengths should not be used as an excuse to say, "That's not my strength, so I don't have to do it." They are a development tool and a common language that help us understand where people naturally find energy, how they contribute, and where complementary partnerships might make the entire team stronger. The performance implications are significant. Gallup reports that people who know and use their strengths are six times as likely to be engaged at work and 7.8% more productive in their roles.
When capacity is limited, that matters.
We don't need every person to be well-rounded. We need the team to be well-rounded.
One of the most important mindset shifts in strengths-based work is letting go of the expectation that everyone should be equally good at everything.
Consider the four CliftonStrengths domains.
Executing talents help us make things happen. These are the people who can create the workflow, establish the deadline, organize the project, and move it across the finish line.
Influencing talents help us move people. They help gain leadership buy-in, advocate for donor relations priorities, communicate impact, and bring others along when change is needed.
Relationship Building talents create the human connections that hold our work together. They help us listen to donors, understand colleagues, build trust, navigate sensitive conversations, and maintain the partnerships required to accomplish work across an organization.
Strategic Thinking talents help us understand what the information is telling us and imagine what could happen next. They see patterns, analyze donor behavior, identify opportunities, challenge outdated practices, and help the team make better decisions.
None is better than another, and donor relations needs all four.
The problem occurs when a team continually defaults to whichever domain is most represented.
A heavily Executing team can become excellent at producing things that perhaps should no longer be produced. A Relationship Building team may preserve a program because people love it even when the data says it is no longer accomplishing its purpose. Strategic Thinkers may create brilliant new approaches that never quite get launched. Influencers may generate enthusiasm before the operational infrastructure is ready.
Strong teams do not eliminate those differences.
They use them.
Strengths can help us solve real donor relations problems differently
Imagine your annual impact reporting process is behind schedule.
The typical response in an understaffed office is familiar: everybody pitches in.
But what if we approached the problem through strengths instead?
A Strategic Thinker might first ask whether every report needs to be created the same way, what information donors value, and whether any reports or elements could be standardized or eliminated.
Someone with strong Executing talents might create the production calendar, clarify ownership, develop templates, and establish checkpoints.
A Relationship Builder might work with faculty, program staff, scholarship recipients, and gift officers to gather the stories and information needed while preserving those important internal relationships.
An Influencer might communicate the new approach to leadership, explain why the process is changing, and secure cooperation from partners who need to participate.
The result is not four people doing the same job.
It is four different kinds of talent contributing to the same outcome.
That distinction is particularly important as donor relations becomes more collaborative. Our previous best-practice work has emphasized cross-functional planning among donor relations, gift officers, communications, operations, and other partners, as well as using donor behavior to trigger the right engagement rather than adding more activity simply for activity's sake.
Strengths can help make that collaboration more intentional.
Five ways to put strengths to work when your team is stretched
Start with the work, not the org chart. Inventory what your team is doing and ask what is truly essential.
Use the Four Pillars of Donor Relations as the filter: acknowledgment, stewardship, recognition, and engagement.
What must happen?
What adds real donor value?
What could be standardized, automated, delegated, combined, or stopped?
Capacity is too precious to spend on organizational habits that no longer serve donors. Automate processes where appropriate, not relationships.
Map strengths to your most critical activities. Ask team members what parts of their work energize them, what they learn quickly, when they lose track of time, and where they have experienced moments of unexpected excellence.
Those "clues to talent" can reveal capabilities that are not obvious from someone's title.
Then compare those talents with the work that must be accomplished.
Build complementary partnerships on purpose.
With smaller teams, cross-training remains essential so that one person's strength does not become an organizational single point of failure.
Pair the person who sees possibilities with the person who knows how to operationalize them.
Pair someone who analyzes donor behavior with someone who can translate that analysis into a compelling recommendation.
Pair a Relationship Builder with an Executor when a project requires both careful relationship management and relentless follow-through.
A reminder: cross-training and asking everyone to function identically are not the same thing.
Manage weaknesses instead of obsessing over fixing them. Strengths-based leadership does not mean ignoring performance problems.
Gallup defines a weakness as “something that gets in the way of success.”
The goal is to recognize it, take responsibility for its impact, and manage it through stronger systems, complementary partners, additional knowledge or skill, or another talent that can compensate.
If I am brilliant at generating ideas but struggle to move them into implementation, the answer may not be to spend all my development time trying to become someone who loves project management.
The answer may be to develop enough discipline to be accountable while partnering with someone whose natural talents help turn ideas into action.
Turn strengths into a 90-day operating plan. Don't let everyone's Top 5 become colorful words taped beside their monitors.
Choose a real donor relations goal.
Identify the strengths that can help accomplish it.
Define three actions, assign ownership, identify any knowledge or skill gaps, and revisit the plan at 30, 60, and 90 days.
The DRG 90-Day Strengths Activation Map was designed to move the conversation from "What are my strengths?" to "How am I going to use them?"
Strengths-based leadership matters even more during uncertainty
Another reason this matters now is trust.
During periods of change, people need clarity about where the organization is headed, what matters most, and where they fit. Gallup's research on trust highlights the importance of clear communication, confidence in the future, listening, and helping employees understand how change will affect them.
Gallup also identifies seven expectations for effective leaders: build relationships, develop people, lead change, inspire others, think critically, communicate clearly, and create accountability. Importantly, leaders do not have to accomplish those things in exactly the same way. Strengths give leaders a way to achieve the required outcome by using the talents that come most naturally to them.
A leader with Empathy may build trust differently than one with Communication. Someone with Futuristic may create hope by helping the team see what is possible, while someone with Responsibility may create stability by establishing clear commitments and consistently following through.
The expectation remains the same.
The route to accomplishing it can be individualized.
That is strengths-based leadership.
Strengths cannot fix structural understaffing
There is an important caution here.
Strengths should never become another way to ask exhausted people to carry an unreasonable workload.
Knowing everyone's strengths does not eliminate the need for appropriate staffing, fair compensation, realistic goals, professional development, time away from work, and leaders who are willing to say no to work that exceeds the team's capacity. AFP's recent guidance on fundraiser burnout similarly argues that burnout needs to be addressed as an organizational design issue, not merely as an individual resilience problem.
Strengths are not a substitute for resources.
They help us use the resources we have more wisely.
And sometimes strengths-based leadership means recognizing that your talented, committed team is already operating at capacity, and advocating for the people, technology, budget, or change in priorities is what they need most.
The donor experience starts with the people creating it
DRG's Four Pillars of the Donor Experience include culture, with a particular emphasis on empowerment, excellence, and gratitude.
That culture does not begin when we send a donor a thank-you letter.
It begins with the people responsible for creating that experience.
If we want our teams to individualize donors, listen carefully, build meaningful relationships, innovate, collaborate, and create extraordinary experiences, then we should create workplaces that recognize their individuality as well.
Especially when the team gets smaller. Instead of asking, "How can everyone do more?" start asking:
· What work matters most?
· Who is naturally positioned to contribute?
· Which strengths are missing from the conversation?
· Where can we partner differently?
· And what can we stop doing so our best people have the capacity to do their best work?
That is not simply a team-building exercise.
It is an operational strategy.
And in donor relations, where our work ultimately depends on trust, relationships, and human connection, it may be one of our most important strategies.
Interested in bringing a strengths-based approach to your donor relations or advancement team? DRG offers customized StrengthsFinder, team-building, donor relations, behavior-based donor relations, and change-management training designed around your organization's realities. f
