What do you do if your fundraising workload is overwhelming?

When fundraising feels overwhelming, prioritize your goals ruthlessly. Focus on high-impact tasks first. Leverage tools like Trello or Asana for task management and stay organized. Utilize fundraising platforms like AngelList or Crunchbase to streamline investor outreach. Seek mentorship or join communities like Y Combinator's Startup School for guidance. Remember, clarity of purpose drives efficient execution.

Here's a crazy idea.... look at the tasks and be honest with yourself 1. What's are bringing in the most and largest gifts. 2. What efforts are fun but don't bring in donations. 3. Focus on #1 & Drop #2. The lack of laser like focus is one of the biggest challenges in our profession. Do a keep or kill drill each month. Those non value adds.... drop!

If your fundraising workload is overwhelming... you should NOT be fundraising. Focus on your business, build revenue, you're not ready to fundraise! Last round that I closed was a VC calling me & offering me money... why? Because I was / am building a real business.

Provide a case study or an example of an organisation that successfully focused on its mission-critical goals and how it helped them grow their fundraising efforts. Emphasise the importance of aligning daily tasks with the organisation's overarching vision.

In my opinion, an exceedingly high workload is relatively common in the routine of most fundraisers. Therefore, it's crucial to develop special skills to learn how to prioritize tasks effectively. For me, a relevant indicator in this regard would be prioritizing short-term strategies or those with seemingly more secure results over fundraising projects that are less feasible or significantly more complex. This approach helps manage the workload and ensures that efforts are focused on initiatives with the highest potential impact.

Offer practical tips on time management within a fundraising team. Share tools or methods that have helped professionals allocate time efficiently to each task and how this planning led to better fundraising outcomes

Is this a joke? In my honest opinion, anyone who can not prioritize their time, can't handle an unmanageable schedule should not be fundraising...

Discuss the psychological and strategic benefits of delegation. You could also highlight how to choose which tasks to delegate and provide insights on maintaining quality control and team morale

Ask for help! There are great fundraising consultants out there that provide an outside perspective and can infuse new ideas into an organization. Sometimes little changes in direction and process can make a huge difference.

Discuss how automation tools have been successfully implemented in fundraising campaigns, reducing the manual workload and increasing efficiency. Consider sharing examples of beneficial software and how to evaluate their effectiveness

I have been working on a project to automate processes such as invoicing, reporting, and KPI’s. We have great success and feedback from staff about how automation has helped eliminate the feeling of being overwhelmed. Microsoft has an impressive catalog that can help.

This has to be a joke. ZERO entrepreneurs who are serious about fundraising would "take care of themselves." They have a job to do of: 1) keeping their company alive. 2) growing their company to it's next evolution. For most people... fundraising is the worst time to take care of yourself.

Emphasize the importance of self-care through personal anecdotes or case studies that demonstrate how maintaining physical, mental, and emotional health has led to better fundraising results. Offer strategies for balancing work and personal life and techniques for managing stress

Focus on the largest task first and remember that small and consistent actions compound overtime. Small actions can will help you to make progress toward your larger goals without becoming overwhelmed or discouraged. “If it's your job to eat a frog, it's best to do it first thing in the morning. And if it's your job to eat two frogs, it's best to eat the biggest one first.” -Mark Twain

Provide insights on building a supportive network for fundraising professionals. Share stories of how mentorship or professional advice has improved fundraising strategies. Discuss the importance of community and reciprocal support in the fundraising sector

I hate to break it to you, but if you are a fundraiser, you are going to be overwhelmed at some point. It's part of the role. Depending on the type of (nonprofit) fundraising you do, you are going to have ebbs and flows based on how prospects move through your pipeline and the priorities facing the organization at any given time. Good fundraisers prioritize and work through the overload, great fundraisers can strategize how they will engage and activate their portfolio based on the time of year, nonprofit priorities, AND donor motivations. This frees them up to be more flexible in managing unexpected requests and expectations for team members and the constituents in their portfolio.

Did we not just say this while we were chatting!?! How do you break the model though, especially in organizations that have been stuck in their ways for decades?