Fundraising is Personal

Leaders are pushing through and beyond burnout. I'm not sure what is beyond burnout, but that's where we are. I think beyond burnout is, is you keep going and working really hard, but you kind of lose sight of your uniqueness and the joy. Things that used to bring you joy. Don't really, I'm seeing a lot of this and, I think it's really important to have a conversation about how fundraising and the way in which you lead your nonprofit organization personal. It's personal. We are all dealing with.

Different challenges. We've gone through different things. A lot of it has been really difficult the last three plus years, and we're getting different results. I've had so many conversations with fundraisers and nonprofit executives who have said there are people struggling to raise money right now. And then I've had a very different conversation with others where they've said, it's getting harder and harder to do this work, and the challenges are overwhelming.

I've had so many different 90 minute strategy sessions with different fundraisers. I've had one-on-one. Implementation calls with people who attend my workshops and it ends up kind of being like therapy because I, not that I'm a therapist, I'm certainly not. I am not a clinical psychologist. I am not a clinician. I am a fundraiser. I'm a leadership coach. I'm a major gift strategist, and I care about people I. And I can see what's going on. I have insight.

This work is personal, and some of you might be struggling with perfectionism and overthinking things. You're not willing to let go of control or you are willing to. But it's just taking you longer to pass the baton, to give opportunities to people on your team, to empower your board, to actually represent your organization on your behalf. You have a habit of second guessing. There are these mental constructs and ways of thinking. That are the reason that you have the results that you have.

If you are dealing with uncertainty with some donors who you used to be able to rely on completely, you might be backing down and settling for less because it seems uncertain. And it actually might be that they're just really busy. They're also tired and exhausted, and therefore unclear in their communication. And we lose sight of being there for our donors.

And that empathy of connecting with them as human beings and understand, like cutting them a break, like, oh yeah, they haven't replied to my emails. There must be something else going on that I'm not aware of, and I hope they're okay because we're in this place of. Being so overworked and focused on the goals and paying the bills and just survival mode that we've lost sight of our uniqueness and our empathy superpower we're like, well, Are these people interested or not?

Like, should I move on or what? Like what's the deal? What is their problem? And that's not urgency. That's impatience. That's desperation. this has to do with you as a human being and remembering that abundance attitude. That there are so many people who care about your cause and your organization, not just the mission, but your organization. And they wanna be a part of it. They wanna help, they wanna make a difference. There's hundreds of people.

And so with that in mind, like it's okay if this one person isn't responding to you. It's all right, and let's actually remember to tap into our empathy and check in with them because it's the right thing to do because we are caring humans, not because it effing raises more money. Like, thank your donors because you are a person of gratitude, not because it's the best strategy. Like, do you understand what I'm saying? Let's go beyond authenticity and let's just integrate our lives.

Let's be integrated human beings. If you are a grateful person in general and somehow you're like impatient with your donors, like get, get back to gratitude. Get back to who you really are, get back to empathy. Tap in, slow down. Take a freaking break. Part of why people are overworked is because of their perfectionism, not because the work requires the volume of hours that you're putting in. I'm gonna say that again. People are overworked, and this might be you.

You might be overworked because of your perfectionism, not because the work requires. The volume of hours that you are putting in, I want you to practice some empathy with yourself. You might not be getting better results in your fundraising because you are not actually connected to your values right now. You're connected to outcomes and output. Constantly going and going and going. I need more meetings. I need to get more meetings on the calendar. I need to send more emails.

I need to make more asks. I need to do more, more, more, more. And I would agree, you do need to do those things, but take a step back and look at, okay, am I losing sight? Of my donor's humanity. Am I losing sight of my own humanity? Am I expecting myself to burn the candle at both ends? And I'm not talking about capacity. Okay? I know you can. I do a lot. You are extremely hardworking. You can put a lot on your shoulders.

It is not about what you can do, and I really hope to God you are beyond the place of trying to prove how hardworking you are and how much you can handle. I want you to be able to move to a place where you have boundaries. Balance is a sham. There is no balance. There are seasons in life and there are boundaries. There are things we need to say no to, but balance is like this. Unattainable, elusive, unrealistic, never, never land. Like, what the hell is balance anyway? Like what?

What are you balancing like, oh, like I gotta have a little bit of shitty and a little bit of good, like I gotta have balance. Like what is that screw balance? Like go really hard, sprint, and then take a break. I mean, not all of the years is sprint, right? And you know when, when the sprint is and you know when the rest is, and then that needs to be incorporated into your daily routine, right? Like you can't sit down at your computer and crank out three hours straight of work. It's not right.

It's not fair. Take a freaking break. It's serious, and then it isn't that serious, right? Like what you're doing is important and also it ain't that important. Like you're not an avenger. You're not saving the world from like an eminent, existential, genocidal threat. I don't know. Like I get that what we do is really important and it is. And it is lifesaving. And it is urgent. And also like eat a snack and go for a walk. You know what I'm saying? Like chill out.

And this self-care movement that we're on, it needs to be community care, like you need to get around people and let them care for you. Let them cook you a meal. Let people help you, ask people for help. Ask them to look after your kids and go get a massage. Like hire a laundry service. Stop cooking every meal and get meal delivery if you don't already. If you don't already get your groceries delivered, I'm sure that if you're listening to this, you probably already get your groceries delivered.

Find ways to rest and, be in healthy community with other people, please stop working so much if that's you. What are the mental habits that we have? We're we're so hard on ourselves. We're overthinking. We're second guessing. It's not perfect enough. It's gotta be perfect. We have to have the perfect pitch deck. We have to get it just right. No, you don't. The people who raise multi-millions, they ask for multi-millions. They don't have a perfect pitch deck.

Yes, you should put your very best out, but you're, you're working yourself into a grind that is not sustainable, and this work is deeply personal. It is a reflection of where you are at. In your soul right now. It is a reflection of you and how you treat yourself in your inner world. And then there's those of you who move so fast and plow through and you're not taking time to reflect. You're losing.

Your momentum, you're losing the energy, the spark, the life force, the essence that you need of joy and fulfillment and meaning and purpose, and your why, your vision, because you're not taking time to reflect, to be still, to consider how far you have come to remember why you do this. To remember that it isn't about you. It actually isn't about your career advancement.

if you focus on the right things, which is serving and loving others, and that is both the community you serve, and your donors, and your board, and your volunteers and your staff, then all of that's gonna fall into place. You're gonna raise more money. And you're going to advance your career. I heard once that you can have either control or growth, and I'm just gonna say right now, there are things that you absolutely need to quit doing. Quit it. You need to give up control over certain things.

You need to give up oversight of the being in the weeds of certain projects, certain things that are happening within your organization. You need to get out of there, and the very first thing in the day that you need to be doing is checking in. With your health and wellness, with your mindset, like for me, that's prayer and reading the scriptures and going for a walk, getting outside, getting the sun in my eyes and on my face, and then listening to a great podcast.

I wouldn't say it's a morning routine necessarily, but I know that in order for me to be the best version of myself that day, that recipe does wonders, whatever it is for you, you need to prioritize that. Do you need to go to the gym and you need to lift weights? Do you need to punch something? I don't know what you need to do. Do you need to have a dance party of one in your kitchen and turn on the music like. Let's implement joy and fun back into our life.

Like the grind is not working and being relentlessly goal-oriented. And I'm, I'm definitely, I do this often cause I love goals, I love them. It's part of why I love fundraising. We're too goal-oriented.

We actually need to slow down and in order to do this work sustainably, we need to be able to enjoy the process, to schedule rest, to schedule things that are going to allow us to keep going because the end of the year is coming, the sprint season will come, September will come, and the heat will turn up. Let's build the right habits and the right mental structures and get the support. We've all gone through a horrific time in human history for so many reasons.

The racial reckoning that we experienced. I mean, I was thinking about George Floyd today, and I remember that he cried out to his mama and I was just like, damn. We all witnessed that. We saw that. I don't know about you, but that scarred my mental psyche. I can only imagine what it must be like to be a person of color, to be a black person, seeing that. and so many injustices at the hands of cops. So many people struggling. So, so much happening that we have witnessed these last three years.

So much loss. So many people died. I mean, can we talk about it? And we're just like, okay, we gotta meet our fundraising goals and we gotta raise this much, and we gotta keep your head down and keep pushing through, like, are you actually getting the support that you need? This is personal. You can only ignore that for so long. Our our need for control and our need to do so much is what's slowing down our growth.

Good is good enough, and uncertainty is not a reason to back down and settle for less. You need the support be able to sustain this work. Get the right mental structures to overcome the overthinking, the second guessing, the talking yourself out of taking conceptive action, making deliberate calculated risks, being able to have the support when the uncertainty does come. There is no formula to this, by the way. It's not like you put in a formula and beep bop boop out pops this thing.

It's not black and white. There's a lot of nuance and different people are getting different results right now. Like I mentioned, there's some people who are like, huh, impending, looming recession. What are you talking about? we're exceeding our goals and others. Are not ready for this moment. They're really struggling. They've prioritized the wrong things, and they're living in the results. They're living in the consequences of those choices.

You have got to get the right support around you, whether that is a coach, it's accountability. You need to stop learning so much and you need to implement. And stop taking what could be done in an hour or two and spending an entire business day or five business days tweaking it to perfection, quit it. That is what is slowing down your revenue growth, relinquish control, trust people. Let them fail and celebrate failure.

Celebrate taking calculated risks, and you will see your organization skyrocket. If everything has to go through you, it's gonna take forever to grow and you're not gonna grow. You're gonna hit a ceiling. Take time to reflect on how far you've come. And get the support that you need because this work is personal. Until next time.