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The Right Roles at the Right Time: Building Campaign Capacity Without Over hiring
- Frances Roen
- Apr 17
- 4 min read
In a recent post, I shared a simple but often uncomfortable truth: You can’t grow a campaign with leftover capacity.
That idea tends to resonate quickly. Most teams feel it immediately.
But the next question is just as important—and often harder to answer:
If we don’t have the capacity… What do we actually do about it?
Do we hire?
Do we shift roles?
Do we bring in support—and if so, when?
This is where many organizations get stuck.
Because campaign capacity isn’t just about adding more people. It’s about understanding what the work actually requires, when it requires it, and how to build the right structure around it.
Let’s walk through what that looks like across each phase.
Pre-Planning: Don’t Hire Yet—Get Honest
During pre-planning, you don’t need to hire anyone.
What you do need is:
a point person
and a core committee (your “kitchen cabinet”)
Point person:
This is the person who helps keep things moving—scheduling meetings, tracking follow-up, and making sure nothing falls through the cracks. It’s best if this is not your Executive Director. Often, it’s your Development Director or a senior staff member.
Core committee:
Typically includes your ED, DD, Board Chair, CFO, and sometimes a program lead. This group helps guide decisions, pressure test ideas, and move planning forward.
But more than structure, this phase is about something deeper: Having a realistic conversation about your actual capacity.
This is where you get clear on:
Who already has too much on their plate to carry campaign work
Where skills are lacking—or quietly leaking
What will need to shift if a campaign moves forward
If you skip this step, the gaps don’t disappear. They just show up later—when the stakes are higher.
Feasibility: Watch for the First Signs of Strain
During feasibility, sometimes your point person and core committee are enough.
And sometimes… you start to feel the pull.
You’re now:
scheduling and conducting interviews
managing follow-up
capturing notes and insights
keeping your database updated and usable
For some teams, this is when it becomes clear: We might need a little help.
That doesn’t mean building a full team. It might look like:
temporary administrative support for scheduling
quarter or part-time database support for entry, coding, and tracking
light coordination by a trusted volunteer to help to keep everything organized
Feasibility is still a learning phase—not just about your campaign, but about your capacity.
Because you’re layering campaign work on top of your existing roles, it becomes a very real-time indicator of:
where things stall
where follow-up drops
where work starts to pile up
Pay attention to that. It’s data.
Quiet Phase: This Is Where Capacity Gets Real
By quiet phase, campaign work is no longer theoretical.
You are meeting with donors, preparing proposals, coordinating committees, writing grants, and keeping your regular development work moving at the same time.
For many Executive Directors and Development Directors, this is the moment where capacity becomes very real.
Often, at least half of your time is now campaign-focused.
So the real question becomes: Who is holding everything else?
For many organizations, this is where contracting or hiring support becomes not just helpful—but necessary.
Common areas to consider:
Grant writing support
Database/CRM support
Administrative or executive assistant support
Annual fund support
Because the biggest time drains we see are:
1. Keeping the day-to-day development work running
2. Ensuring the ED has enough space to think strategically and meet with donors
If planning was done well, you should already have clarity on:
what moved into maintain lanes
what moved into pause or stop lanes
where your ED and DD will need support
The Campaign Manager: The Role That Keeps Things Moving
This is the phase where one role often makes the biggest difference: The Campaign Manager.
This person is not your lead fundraiser, and they are not the same as campaign counsel.
A campaign manager helps keep the campaign moving day to day. They track timelines, coordinate meetings and materials, manage follow-up, and make sure next steps don’t live only in people’s heads. They are often the connective tissue between strategy and execution.
Campaign counsel, by contrast, brings strategy, structure, and outside perspective. Counsel helps you build the roadmap, pressure test decisions, identify risks, and keep the campaign aligned to best practices and timeline. A campaign manager helps carry that plan forward internally.
Another simple way to think about it:
Counsel helps you chart the path;
The campaign manager helps you keep moving on it.
Without a campaign manager, those day-to-day details often fall back on the ED or DD—or get delayed altogether. And even a strong strategy can lose momentum when no one is clearly holding execution.
You Don’t Need Everything—You Need the Right Things at the Right Time
Not every organization needs to hire all of these roles.
But every organization needs to be honest about:
what the work requires
who currently owns it
and whether they actually have the time to do it well
Because campaign capacity isn’t built by adding people randomly.
It’s built by aligning the right roles, at the right time, with the right level of support.
You Don’t Have to Figure This Out Alone
If you’re trying to determine what your team can realistically carry—and where added support may be needed—you don’t have to sort through that on your own.
At Fundraising Sol, we help organizations not only plan for campaigns and navigate feasibility, but also assess the people-side of campaign readiness: what roles are needed, where responsibilities may need to shift, and what kind of support will make the biggest difference.
Sometimes that means no hiring yet. Sometimes it means a contractor, a campaign manager, or added administrative support.
The goal is not to overbuild—it’s to build wisely.
Photo Credit: Tech for America
Frances Roen is the Founder of Fundraising Sol and a fundraising consultant with two decades of experience. She is deeply passionate about relationship building, individual donor work, and supporting nonprofit professionals’ health and wellness to enable them to deliver their best work.
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