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Persuading Organisations to Invest in Development

May 14th, 2026

I was recently asked to participate in a Chartered Institute of Fundraising podcast focusing on professional development. In addition to exploring emotional intelligence in depth, I made my aversion to the term; ‘soft skills’ known, not least because they are often the hardest to develop, the strongest aides to resilience and the ones most likely to keep you employable in a world of AI.

We also discussed how an individual could go about persuading their organisation’s leadership to invest in their professional development. One approach I didn’t have time to raise was what I term the ‘pragmatist’s thought experiment’. To keep the maths simple let’s assume a charity has a team of three fundraisers. Over a three-year period, it is quite possible that due to staff turnover in the team, three, perhaps even four recruitment cycles will be required during this period. Let’s assume that there’s a training course costing £1,500 per person, which each of the three fundraisers in the team would like to go on. On the basis that the team in performing well, I think you only need to believe two things for it to make sense to fund all three training course places:

(i) The motivation to learn and the sense of feeling valued could reduce the number of departures from 3-4 to 2-3 during the three-year period.

(ii) Each round of recruitment costs the organisation £5,000 (a quick google search suggests this is a very conservative estimate).

On this basis, even if the training does not make the fundraisers better fundraisers, investing in the training would save the charity money: £4500 spent on training, £5,000 saved on recruitment equals a net saving of £500. If the training only makes each fundraiser 1% better at fundraising and you only see this benefit in the final year, training will increase the charity’s income by several thousand pounds (based on annual fundraising income of at least £300,000, which again is very conservative).

I’m always wary of equating an outcome (in this case reduced staff turnover) to a single variable (in this case development opportunities). In my experience no amount of training can withstand poor management or a toxic culture. Anecdotally though, there does seem to be a strong correlation between organisations that continue to invest in staff, even in tough financial times, and long-term organisational performance. If anyone has any hard data to back this up though, please do get in touch. It would be great to have my anecdotal hunch confirmed and such data could help other staff members to get the development opportunities they need.

Another point I wished I’d stressed in the podcast is that some of the most valuable development opportunities come without any financial participation fee – becoming a charity trustee being a prime example. Another is simply allowing staff to read books on topics they’re interested in developing during work time.

If you’d like to listen to the full podcast, click here.