The Power of Employer Branding: Attracting Talent to Smaller Nonprofits
Smaller nonprofits can successfully leverage the power of employer branding, a strategic approach that highlights their unique culture, mission and impact.
Tag Archive for: nonprofit sector ireland
Leading with Purpose: Why Irish Nonprofits Must Champion DEI
Organisations that embed DEI strategies as core priorities, are more likely to succeed, regardless of political or cultural headwinds.
The Board’s Role in Strategy Development
Developing a strategy isn’t just about setting ambitious goals; it’s about how Boards and Executives work together to shape, resource, and oversee them.
2 Key Objectives for the Sector’s New Strategy – Funding and Governance
With the Government set to develop a successor to its current strategy for the sector, it’s timely to identify a few core objectives for inclusion.
Raising the Game: Why Governance Matters in Sport
Effective governance is not just a box-ticking exercise. It is the foundation for trust and, critically, for funding, which ultimately supports long-term success.
Hiring for Mission Alignment, Not Just Experience
Values-based leadership is fundamental to fostering organisational resilience, effectiveness and long-term sustainability for the nonprofit sector.
Key Implications: The Charity Regulator’s Strategy 2025–2027
The Charity Regulator’s new Strategy 2025–2027 sets out a vision for a “thriving, trusted charity sector in Ireland”. Shaped by the Charities (Amendment) Act and sector-wide consultation the Strategy signals significant changes in governance, reporting, and stakeholder engagement.
The Value of Skills-Based Hiring in Ireland’s Nonprofit Sector
Change is the only constant, and with the rise of AI, Irish nonprofits are increasingly focusing on soft skills developed through life and work experience.
Fundraising Surge: What It Means for Non-profits
A Talent Pipeline Under Strain
According to a recently published LinkedIn report, fundraising professionals are currently the most in-demand talent in Ireland. In a sector where securing sustainable funding remains a consistent challenge, the competition for skilled fundraisers continues to intensify.
Fundraised income is essential for delivering vital services and advancing meaningful causes. Yet, attracting and retaining top fundraising talent is one of the biggest obstacles to achieving long-term strategic fundraising goals. Our LinkedIn Talent Insights data reveals that the median tenure for senior fundraising professionals is just 1.3 years, with more junior roles averaging slightly longer at 1.7 years.
Solving this talent retention issue is key. It enables organisations to unlock sustainable income streams, reduce crisis-driven decisions, and build long-term resilience into their mission delivery.
Building a Culture of Fundraising
Despite the sector being valued at €1.8 billion in 2022 and becoming increasingly professionalised, many organisations still hesitate to view fundraising investment as a strategic priority. At the Board and senior leadership levels, there is often a lack of understanding about fundraising ROI, risk tolerance, and fear of scrutiny.
Hiring a senior fundraising leader is not just a recruitment decision—it’s a strategic one. The right candidate understands the business of fundraising, donor engagement, and can embed this thinking across the team and wider organisation. The right hire can move your organisation from breaking even to one on a path of high growth and impact.
Three Conflicts Hindering Fundraising Success
At the recent launch of Great Fundraising Organisations, Alan Clayton identified three key conflicts that often impede successful fundraising and contribute to leadership turnover:
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Cultural Conflict: Fundraisers are driven by ambition, urgency, and emotion, while service delivery teams tend to prioritise structure, consensus, and evidence. Bridging this divide requires mutual respect and organisational alignment.
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Investment Conflict: Boards often prioritise immediate crises, overlooking the importance of future-focused fundraising strategies. Strategic investments may not yield immediate returns, but they are critical for long-term growth and sustainability.
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Communications Conflict: Messaging must be tailored. Use emotion and storytelling to engage donors, and highlight impact and outcomes when promoting services. Consistent, purposeful communication builds donor trust and enhances engagement.
Skills-Based Hiring in a Competitive Fundraising Market
We take a consultative and strategic approach to fundraising recruitment—assessing organisational culture, goals, and needs to identify the talent best positioned to drive results.
In a competitive market, skills-based hiring is crucial. Moving beyond traditional career paths opens up opportunities to attract professionals from the private sector who are motivated to transition into purpose-driven roles.
Key transferable fundraising skills to look for include:
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Strategic thinking
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Negotiation and problem-solving
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Relationship-building and community engagement
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Commercial acumen and business development
By widening the talent pool and committing to proper onboarding and training, organisations can tap into new sources of talent.
The Ideal Fundraising Candidate Profile
To achieve sustainable growth, nonprofits must invest in top-tier fundraising talent and foster a culture of relationship-driven philanthropy. This unlocks long-term financial sustainability and enables deeper community impact.
The ideal senior candidate will combine strategic vision with authenticity and interpersonal skills—capable of navigating conflict and driving organisational growth. But even the best fundraising professionals cannot succeed in isolation.
Organisations must align around a shared growth mindset. Without Board-level commitment to fundraising as a strategic priority, talent will churn, progress will stall, and impact will suffer. The cost of inaction isn’t just missed opportunity—it’s missed impact.
Is Governance Ever ‘Good Enough’?
Written by Sheena Horgan, Director of Advisory Services, 2into3.
There is a certain pragmatic logic in the phrase, don’t let the perfect bully the good, but can this be applied to governance? Especially when the organisation in question is non-profit.
However, socially good the credentials of a charity or organisation, they are no excuse for poor governance. That said, the nature of the sector does require it to balance best practice deliverables, with what is feasible given an organisation’s capacity and resources. Focusing on achieving functional and effective governance, as opposed to striving for perfection, can ensure accountability, transparency, and inclusivity while being adaptable to contextual challenges.
Scoping your Governance Pathway
Good governance in the sector, is less about idealistic behaviour, and more about best practice. It should be realistic, first off recognising resource and capacity constraints, and then planning to address these in a coherent and incremental way that prioritises the most detrimental deficits.
Whilst it’s fair to say that not all governance gaps need to be tackled immediately, it is beholden on Boards to scope, articulate and navigate their organisation’s governance pathway. This likely means breaking down the complex governance agenda into manageable and context-sensitive steps. There will inevitably be trade-offs on what can be achieved now and what might be deferred. Asking the key question, ‘what will this governance task achieve?’, in relation to the organisation’s vision and mission and values, can be a helpful lens when considering which aspects are tackled first.
What is ‘Good Governance’?
A cautionary warning though, agreeing what good or good enough governance entails, may be influenced by the Board’s entrenched views, group think and biases, and even ‘founder syndrome’. There is a reason why independent external Board Reviews are recommended on a regular basis within the Governance Code. Charities that rely only on internally conducted reviews, run the danger of reenforcing and perpetuating poor governance practices. Over the years, I’ve witnessed light-touch evaluations with little depth or robustness to be a genuine assessment. And I’ve seen how “governance” vocally weaponised in the Boardroom to sustain certain positions and viewpoints.
There is an abundance of case studies on poor governance and therefore no excuse for it to be brushed over. But to offer some guidance that might lessen the fear or enormity of “Good Governance” for charities and non-profits, here’s some simple principles of Good Enough Governance:
Pragmatism over perfection
Governance structures should enable good decision making, so they need to be effective in practice rather than in theory. Consider policies and processes in this light, asking are they readable, accessible and implementable
Improvement by increments
Clarify the scope of what’s needed and design a time-line and pathway that allows for continuous progress and iterative governance capacity-building
Form follows function
Governance procedures should reflect, state and deliver their desired outcome e.g., integrity, accountability, etc.
Allow for agility
New and revised governance practices are emerging all the time – take hybrid meetings, DEI and AI as cases in point. Taking an agile approach and adapting where required means having governance on Boards’ radar as well as agenda.
Get in Touch
If you’re seeking governance support, visit our webpage for more information, or contact Sheena Horgan, Director of Advisory Services at sheena.horgan@2into3.com.