Top 12 Fundraising Coordinator Skills to Put on Your Resume

In the competitive world of nonprofit organizations, a standout resume is crucial for aspiring fundraising coordinators. Highlighting a robust set of skills tailored to the unique demands of fundraising can significantly elevate your candidacy, setting you apart as a valuable asset to any team.

Fundraising Coordinator Skills

1. Grant Writing
2. Donor Management
3. Salesforce CRM
4. Event Planning
5. Budget Management
6. Social Media
7. Email Marketing
8. Raiser's Edge
9. Data Analysis
10. Public Speaking
11. Negotiation
12. Project Management

1. Grant Writing

Grant writing means researching prospects, matching mission to mandate, and drafting tight proposals that win support from government agencies, foundations, and corporate philanthropy. You frame the need, define outcomes, map the work, and prove you can deliver—so funders say yes.

Why It's Important

Strong proposals unlock vital revenue, sustain programs, and fuel growth. Without them, even the best ideas stall.

How to Improve Grant Writing Skills

Sharpen clarity, focus, and fit with funder priorities.

1. Study the funder: Understand their goals, vocabulary, and what they’ve funded before. Mirror their focus without bending your mission.

2. Follow instructions: Format, length, attachments, budget rules—precision matters.

3. Define outcomes: Specific, measurable, time-bound. Explain how you’ll track impact.

4. Make the case: A crisp need statement backed by data and lived context. Urgency, not drama.

5. Budget that tells the story: Every line connects to activities and outcomes. No orphans, no fluff.

6. Show proof: Past results, credible partners, realistic timelines, risk mitigation.

7. Edit hard: One voice, zero errors. Ask a colleague to review.

8. Keep learning: Candid’s training, peer reviews, and sample proposals help you level up.

Build a library of boilerplate, logic models, and common attachments so you move faster without sounding canned.

How to Display Grant Writing Skills on Your Resume

2. Donor Management

Donor management is the craft of tracking, understanding, and deepening relationships across the donor journey—prospecting, cultivation, solicitation, and stewardship—so supporters feel known and keep giving.

Why It's Important

Retention beats acquisition on cost and stability. Strong systems protect data, reveal patterns, and power timely, personal outreach.

How to Improve Donor Management Skills

1. Segment smartly: By recency, frequency, amount, interests, and channel. Different segments, different messages.

2. Personalize: Use names, reference impact, reflect preferences. Classy-style best practices apply: specific beats generic.

3. Adopt a CRM: Track touchpoints, pledges, soft credits, and moves. TechSoup and peer groups can help you choose.

4. Build a stewardship plan: Thank quickly, report impact regularly, invite feedback, celebrate milestones. AFP-style principles work well.

5. Survey and listen: Simple feedback loops via tools like SurveyMonkey reveal what donors value.

6. Train your team: NonprofitReady courses and internal playbooks keep everyone aligned.

7. Measure what matters: Retention, upgrade rates, lifetime value, response by channel. Use analytics to steer decisions.

How to Display Donor Management Skills on Your Resume

3. Salesforce CRM

Salesforce CRM—especially Nonprofit Cloud (formerly NPSP)—centralizes donor data, standardizes processes, and surfaces insights across campaigns, events, and giving programs.

Why It's Important

One source of truth. Automation saves hours. Dashboards turn noise into decisions that lift revenue.

How to Improve Salesforce CRM Skills

1. Customize for fundraising: Fields, page layouts, record types, and opportunity stages reflecting your pipeline.

2. Automate with Flow: Thank-you workflows, pledge reminders, lapsed-donor nudges, task assignments. Retire legacy Workflow Rules and Process Builder where possible.

3. Integrate: Connect email marketing, online giving forms, and event tools to reduce manual entry.

4. Keep data clean: Validation rules, duplicate management, and scheduled audits. Bad data, bad decisions.

5. Report relentlessly: Custom reports and dashboards tracking retention, LYBUNT/SYBUNT, ROI by campaign, average gift, and pipeline health.

6. Keep learning: Trailhead modules, user groups, and admin office hours accelerate mastery.

How to Display Salesforce CRM Skills on Your Resume

4. Event Planning

Event planning for fundraising blends logistics with storytelling—designing experiences that inspire generosity and spark community.

Why It's Important

Well-run events raise funds, recruit donors, and deepen loyalty. Poorly run ones drain budgets and goodwill.

How to Improve Event Planning Skills

1. Set sharp goals: Net revenue, attendee mix, pledges, acquisitions—define success upfront.

2. Budget with buffers: Price out vendors, AV, permits, insurance, and a contingency line. Track actuals in real time.

3. Know your audience: Program length, format, and messaging tuned to donor preferences.

4. Use tech: Event platforms for registration, seating, and check-in; mobile bidding; simple giving pages.

5. Lock vendors early: Venues, caterers, and rentals with clear SLAs and backup options.

6. Plan for risk: Weather, no-shows, Wi‑Fi failures, speaker cancellations—build a Plan B for each.

7. Debrief fast: Collect feedback (surveys, staff notes), analyze KPIs, document learnings for next time.

How to Display Event Planning Skills on Your Resume

5. Budget Management

Budget management means planning, monitoring, and adjusting dollars across campaigns, events, and stewardship so every expense advances the mission and every revenue line is realistic.

Why It's Important

Discipline protects margins, keeps leadership informed, and prevents overreach. Healthy budgets, healthy programs.

How to Improve Budget Management Skills

1. Build from goals: Start with revenue targets and required activities. Model conservative, expected, and stretch scenarios.

2. Track in real time: Use spreadsheets or finance tools to record income and expenses weekly. Early variance detection saves programs.

3. Review monthly: Budget vs. actuals, burn rate, and cash flow. Course-correct quickly.

4. Control costs: Bid vendors, negotiate in-kind, and trim nice-to-haves. Document savings.

5. Forecast forward: Use historicals and pipeline data to project revenue and adjust spend accordingly.

6. Communicate: Share concise updates with stakeholders—what changed, why, and next steps.

How to Display Budget Management Skills on Your Resume

6. Social Media

Social media builds awareness fast, nurtures community, and drives action when stories land and calls to give are simple.

Why It's Important

It’s cost-effective reach. Two-way conversation. Real-time momentum for campaigns and events.

How to Improve Social Media Skills

1. Define audiences: Donors, volunteers, partners—tailor content by platform.

2. Post consistently: Use a calendar and scheduling tools like Hootsuite or native schedulers.

3. Tell tight stories: Impact vignettes, short videos, and authentic voices beat generic posts.

4. Ride relevant trends: Thoughtful hashtags and timely hooks—only when aligned to mission.

5. Engage: Reply, repost supporter content, and thank publicly. Community first.

6. Use visuals: Design with Canva or Adobe Express for thumb-stopping graphics.

7. Measure and adapt: Use platform insights and GA4 to see what converts and iterate.

8. Collaborate: Partner with values-aligned creators and micro-influencers.

9. Promote events: Teasers, countdowns, livestream snippets, and easy donate links.

10. Experiment with ads: Modest paid budgets for lookalike audiences and retargeting can lift results.

How to Display Social Media Skills on Your Resume

7. Email Marketing

Email is your durable, direct line to donors—perfect for storytelling, updates, and clean conversion paths to give.

Why It's Important

It’s personal, trackable, and affordable. Great for retention and reactivation when done thoughtfully.

How to Improve Email Marketing Skills

1. Segment: By recency, gift size, interests, and engagement. Relevance lifts response.

2. Win the subject line: Clear, curious, honest. Test length and tone.

3. Tell impact stories: Photos, tight copy, and a single purpose per email.

4. Use bold CTAs: One button, minimal clicks, mobile-friendly donation flow. Test placement and color.

5. A/B test: Subject lines, send times, images, and CTAs. Keep the winners, retire the rest.

6. Design for mobile: Responsive templates, large tap targets, short paragraphs.

How to Display Email Marketing Skills on Your Resume

8. Raiser's Edge

Raiser’s Edge (and Raiser’s Edge NXT) is Blackbaud’s donor database for tracking constituents, gifts, events, and campaigns while enabling robust reporting and stewardship.

Why It's Important

It standardizes data and streamlines fundraising operations—saving time, reducing errors, and supporting sustained growth.

How to Improve Raiser's Edge Skills

1. Clean and maintain: De-duplicate, standardize fields, and schedule data hygiene tasks.

2. Customize dashboards: Surface the KPIs you live by—retention, pipeline, appeal performance.

3. Use analytics: Build custom queries and reports to spot trends and segment lists quickly.

4. Train continuously: Blackbaud trainings, webinars, and user communities keep skills fresh.

5. Automate stewardship: Thank-you letters, receipts, and touchpoint reminders on autopilot.

6. Integrate: Connect your email platform, forms, and event tools to reduce manual work.

7. Iterate with feedback: Gather user input and adopt new features that cut friction.

How to Display Raiser's Edge Skills on Your Resume

9. Data Analysis

Data analysis turns raw giving and engagement data into decisions—who to ask, when to ask, and how to speak so it resonates.

Why It's Important

It sharpens targeting, measures ROI, and directs resources toward what works—lifting revenue while lowering waste.

How to Improve Data Analysis Skills

1. Know your data: Sources, definitions, caveats. Document it so everyone speaks the same language.

2. Use the right tools: Excel for foundations; add BI tools like Tableau or native CRM dashboards as you grow. TechSoup can help with access.

3. Learn core stats: Averages, variance, cohorts, significance testing—enough to avoid false signals.

4. Visualize: Clear charts beat dense tables. Canva or Data Studio-style tools help clarity.

5. Keep learning: Courses from Coursera or edX, webinars, and peer groups keep skills current.

6. Apply insights: Turn findings into tests—then operationalize what wins.

How to Display Data Analysis Skills on Your Resume

10. Public Speaking

Public speaking for fundraisers is persuasive storytelling—on stage, in boardrooms, over Zoom—aimed at sparking action.

Why It's Important

It brings the mission to life, wins trust, and unlocks support that email alone can’t touch.

How to Improve Public Speaking Skills

1. Audience first: Map their values and objections. Build from their world, not yours.

2. Tell a sharp story: Problem, stakes, solution, impact, invitation. Keep it human.

3. Practice out loud: Record, time, iterate. Toastmasters or a trusted peer group speeds growth.

4. Mind delivery: Pace, pausing, gesture, eye contact. Warmth beats polish.

5. Use visuals sparingly: Slides should support, not drown the message.

6. Seek feedback: Ask for specific notes. Improve one element at a time.

7. Study great talks: Analyze what works—structure, tone, and rhythm—and adapt thoughtfully.

How to Display Public Speaking Skills on Your Resume

11. Negotiation

Negotiation balances your organization’s needs with a donor’s or sponsor’s interests to reach agreements that move the mission forward.

Why It's Important

Better terms, stronger partnerships, more resources—without burning bridges.

How to Improve Negotiation Skills

1. Prepare: Know your value, deal breakers, and alternatives. Research the other party’s motivations.

2. Build rapport: Trust opens doors. Start relational, then talk terms.

3. Listen actively: Let them reveal priorities, risks, and timing constraints.

4. Be clear: Simple language, specific asks, no ambiguity.

5. Seek win‑win: Name trade-offs and craft options where both sides gain.

6. Hold your line: Be ready to walk if terms undercut the mission.

7. Practice: Debrief every negotiation. Refine your playbook.

Books worth reading: Getting to Yes by Fisher and Ury; Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss.

How to Display Negotiation Skills on Your Resume

12. Project Management

Project management wrangles scope, time, budget, and people so campaigns and events land on target—and on time.

Why It's Important

Clear plans reduce risk, clarify roles, and free teams to do their best work. Results follow.

How to Improve Project Management Skills

1. Organize the work: Break projects into milestones and tasks. Use tools like Trello, Asana, Monday.com, or ClickUp.

2. Communicate constantly: Cadenced updates, clear owners, documented decisions. Slack or email—just be consistent.

3. Standardize: Templates for briefs, timelines, and postmortems. Repeatable beats heroic.

4. Measure performance: Track KPIs like cost to raise a dollar, response rates, and timeline variance.

5. Adopt data habits: Use GA4 and CRM reports to steer priorities and kill low-ROI work.

6. Keep learning: Short courses, communities, and mentorship speed up mastery.

How to Display Project Management Skills on Your Resume