If you’re a one-person development and communications department in a busy nonprofit organization, you how challenging it can be. Your job title consists of:
- Individual giving manager
- Event planner
- Grant writer
- Database manager
- Director of stewardship
- Public relations director
- Social media manager
- Webmaster
- and more
How do you keep it all together…or do you? Studies have shown that multi-tasking flat out doesn’t work. You know it yourself: when you’re responding to emails, while simultaneously writing your year-end appeal letter, and simultaneously running queries on your database, you’re not giving your best to any one of those tasks.
The truth is, by doing less, you might accomplish more.
How’s that?
Well, stop for a moment. What is, after all, the best use of your time? Where do you need to focus – really focus – to fully fund your organization’s mission?
- Building relationships
- Following to your development plan
- Understanding your mission, inside and out
One way to ensure that you get done everything that needs to get done is by batching. Batching simply involves looking at tasks that you do over and over again and batching them into one or two spans of time. Examples of things you might “batch” include:
- Checking email once or twice a day. Perhaps schedule email from 9:00 until 9:15 or 9:30 and then again before you leave for the day. (Trouble sticking to it? Try a site-blocking program such as Leechblock to remind you.)
- The same with social media. Spend 30 minutes to an hour a day monitoring your organization’s social media accounts. Schedule it.
- When can you schedule daily or weekly calls to donors to thank them for their support?
What are weekly and monthly habits that will bring you closer to your goals?
- Schedule an hour once or twice a day or half a day a week dedicated solely to foundation prospect research.
- Eliminate meetings whenever possible.
- Free three to four hours a week when you’ll connect with program staff, take donors or board members to lunch.
Buy yourself a timer, and use it. A task you might think takes you three hours might, in reality take you one. And vice versa. Learn where your time goes.
Delegate
A word about delegating: I’ve seen waaaay too many organizations delegating responsibilities that they haven’t taken the time to understand. Think social media or website development – this is what leads to organizations spending $5000 and more for a website they could have paid $500 with with better functionality – and control. Understand why you are in social media and where your donors are. I’d be very leery about outsourcing your social media, particularly without a solid understanding of your motivations and goals for social media.
Think creatively. How could you utilize Craigslist or elance? I’ve outsourced to Craigslist for small jobs like creating editable pdf surveys, logo design, compiling results, Excel worksheets – you name it.
Whenever you’re tempted to veer off course, remind yourself: “how does this factor into my development plan?”
Want more? Check out Simple Development Systems: Successful fundraising for the one-person shop, the only book written solely for the one-person fundraising department!
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