This national study developed a descriptive data base for the characteristics, functions, leader behaviors, and effectiveness ratings of development officers who belong to the National Council for Resource Development. These data were examined with respect to their relationship to institutional size, community wealth, size of staff, and age of the foundations. Twelve percent of these development officers were minorities and 43 percent were female. The mean age of the development officers was 44 years and more than 30 percent held doctoral degrees. Their graduate majors clustered in four disciplines, while their graduate degrees were overwhelmingly in education. They reported little previous experience in development work, though most prior work experience had been in the field of education. Nearly 70 percent reported directly to the presidents of their institutions. Almost 92 percent of these institutions were found to have foundations and more than half of these foundations were less than five years old. Development officers indicated that the functional area of greatest importance and the one for which they had the greatest responsibility was that of program planning. Two of the most important program planning functions were those of: (a) identifying funding sources, and (b) cultivating potential funding sources. Yet, the functional area of least importance and the one for which development officers reported the least responsibility, was that of fund raising. This finding was partially explained by the artificial grouping of the functions and by the fact that most development officers reported sharing rather than carrying primary responsibility for the fund raising functions. Development officers rated high on both the task-oriented and on the person-oriented dimensions of the leadership scale. They were rated by their supervisors as high in overall effectiveness. They were also rated as effective in both fund raising and in "friend raising." Younger development officers were perceived as more effective than their older counterparts. No other relationships were found between characteristics, leader behaviors, functions, effectiveness, and situational differences among institutions. lmplications for these findings include pre-service and in-service education as well as use in the selection and the evaluation of development officers. / Ed. D.