Let’s face it: you are no use the constituents that your nonprofit serves if you are too burned out. In the nonprofit world, it’s easy to think that everyone involved is brimming with goodwill and energy at all times. While passion for a mission is great, fundraising professionals are often juggling multiple demands with very limited resources…

Top performing fundraisers know that scheduling their day hour by hour is key to success. We asked our top performing development professional clients and colleagues about their daily habits, non-negotiables, and breakdown of their work day, hour by hour, and we put together a sample schedule based on the common time blocks.

Look at the calendar and map out a timeline for your year-end activities remembering that most electronic messages can be scheduled in advance. Don’t plan so much that you can’t execute it well if you’re just starting now, but pick 4 activities, integrate them into one theme and do them well! Do something that will result in revenue coming in the door every week during the month of December.

We suggest blocking out time on your calendar each week for specific areas of your role. If this is difficult, start with one hour for each. That’s five hours total of the minimum forty hours a week you’re dedicating to your mission. Doable, right? Especially if you start seeing the fruits of your labor in measurable ways.

With not enough time to do everything, or at least not enough time to do everything well, we can take lessons from our top earning nonprofit clients, along with national data to show where fundraising staff should be spending their time every October.