Why Fundraisers Leave and How Quality Onboarding Keeps Them w/ Sue Frost
Fundraiser turnover costs organizations money, momentum, and donor relationships. Sue Frost set out to study it through graduate research on onboarding, and she found two distinct reasons fundraisers walk away. Early-career fundraisers leave when they feel disconnected from the mission. More experienced fundraisers leave when they lack support from their manager or the resources to do the job.
You'll learn why onboarding should run on a 12-month cycle, and why helping new hires build relationships outside the development office keeps them around longer. Sue explains why a new fundraiser needs to understand how decisions actually get made, and how a simple three-way check-in at 30 and 60 days catches problems early. She also shares why a ride-along on a delivery route can teach more than a week of orientation.
Tom and Sue also talk through the biggest mistake organizations make when hiring a gift officer, the moment a routine offer of "coaching" made a new employee freeze, and how to tell whether onboarding actually worked.
This is Part 2 of a three-part conversation with Sue Frost.
Looking for fundraising coaching? Check out www.abundantvision.net [http://www.abundantvision.net/]
21 Sept 2026
Building a Fundraising Career That Lasts w/ Sue Frost
The average fundraiser changes jobs every two to three years. Sue Frost stayed at Ohio State for 25 of them, working across athletics, the health sciences, professional schools, and the arts before making the jump to lead fundraising at Ohio's largest food bank.
In this episode, you'll hear how a champion Girl Scout cookie seller found her way into development, and what made Bowling Green's graduate program such a reliable launching pad for fundraising leaders. Sue explains how she built a varied career inside a single institution, and why working alongside strong leaders mattered as much as any title.
Then the conversation turns to her move from higher ed to social services: a faster pace, more room to experiment with text messaging and micro-influencers, and a donor base that includes neighbors who give $10 alongside seven-figure corporate partners. Tom also shares why food banks are personal for him, going back to his early days working for minimum wage.
This is Part 1 of a three-part conversation with Sue Frost.
Looking for fundraising coaching? Check out www.abundantvision.net [http://www.abundantvision.net/]
6 Sept 2026
From 6 Hours to 15 Minutes: The AI Workflows Actually Saving Fundraisers Time
Tom picks up where the last episode left off and gets specific about what's working in his own shop. He walks through the report that used to eat six hours and three people's time and now takes fifteen minutes, how he builds a data room to train AI on his organization's voice for grant writing, and why he switched from ChatGPT to Claude for anything that needs to sound human. He also gets honest about what he hasn't tried yet, including agentic AI and virtual engagement officers, and closes with his take on where all of this is actually headed for small shops without big budgets.
Looking for fundraising coaching? Check out www.abundantvision.net [http://www.abundantvision.net/]
Reach and audience
Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.
Apple Podcasts (US)
5.0 / 5
2 ratings
Spotify
5.0 / 5
8 ratings
Podcast Authority Score: 48 / 100
A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.
Quality
71
Social presence
0
YouTube
0
Engagement
60
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