Filling the roster of your development team is a lot like being the GM of a small market baseball team. You can’t compete with the for profit companies on salary. So, you have to field a team with the best players available in your price range. But that doesn’t mean you can’t field a winning team.

So, how do you get quality people at a discount?  First, if you’ve never read the book Moneyball by Michael Lewis, I recommend starting there. It follows the Oakland A’s baseball team as Lewis tries to answer the question: How does a team with half the payroll of the New York Yankees seem to field a competitive team year after year?

The lessons learned in the book apply to staffing your development team. Don’t have time to read the book? Here are some tips I’ve used.

1) Learn to spot inefficiencies in the way talent is evaluated.

Example: The obvious answer to how are we going to fill the open grant writing position is to hire the candidate with the most grant writing experience/success. I recently did the exact opposite! Of the final three candidates, I chose the one who had only marginal grant writing experience. What she did have was a vast array of experience that could easily have her filling a variety of roles in our department. The other candidates had much more grant writing experience, but that’s ALL they had. Plus, I knew she could write, she just needed some coaching. Now, I have an excellent grant writer who can do just about any job in our department (even mine!).

2) Learn to get talent at a discount.

Example: When A-Rod gets sick of playing in New York, he might just take less money to play in Minnesota. The same applies to recruiting staff. Keep your eye on people at other organizations who aren’t happy in their current positions and whose life goals align with your organization’s mission. This isn’t about paying somebody less than their worth. That’s not the mindset to have. It’s about being able to offer someone a position within your organization that rewards them in ways that a higher salary can never do.

3) Learn to let staff make mistakes.

Example: I frustrated a lot of staff members last fall at an event because they kept coming to me with issues and I kept sending them to the event coordinator. To some, I was goofing off or not taking my job as boss seriously. What they didn’t know was that our relatively new event coordinator had never put on an event of that scale before. She needed the experience. All of the experience, including issues, problems, and making mistakes. I intentionally removed myself from the decision making that day because I wanted her to grow as a person and an employee. I also know that someday, she would like to run her own event company. I’m not afraid to help her reach that goal, because I know she will work harder for me while she’s here if I help prepare her for what’s next.

The result: sure a few people thought I was a slacker that day. But, my event coordinator emerged with a confidence that has been noticed by many people. Now, she’s creating an event top to bottom and I don’t lose a second’s sleep over it. I know the event will be first class.

You can field a Major League team on a Little League budget. It just takes a different mindset to attract and keep talent.