Keep Your Eyes on Dec. 31: How to Focus and Get It All Done at Year-End

There are 22 workdays until Dec. 20. You’ll likely also work a few of the days between then and Dec. 31, so let’s call it a holiday-specific 25 workdays til year-end. 

How are you going to use that time?

Not long ago, my colleague Karen Kendrick calculated that out of the 31 days in a month, we actually work about 18 (after weekends, holidays, PTO, etc). You’re probably also losing another 6-7 days, especially this time of year, to various urgencies and emergencies. (“Drop everything! The event’s coming up and we need all hands on deck;” “Please join this working group to discuss ABC;” team meetings, cake in the breakroom, etc.)

Add to that the posturing, the performance of work, the email sent late at night, or the puff of air blown out when a colleague invites you to lunch to indicate how swamped you are: sometimes called LARPing, or “live-action-role-playing” the job. This performance can get rewarded, but ultimately, it keeps us hyper-focused on the urgent and mundane at the expense of deep, high-value work with our donors.

Now, of course, some of these meetings are essential: you have to breathe in to breathe out.

You can’t tell the story of your donor’s impact with organization and community without staying connected to the community and the work being done by your organization. The boss needs to know what you’re up to and how to support you. Representatives are needed on cross-functional teams to move the organization’s mission forward.

But, we can’t forget the fact that roughly half of meetings aren’t essential. Connections to your colleagues are important, but constant interruptions suck valuable time and even-more-valuable attention from the core of our jobs: inspiring generosity in our donors. 

Given how few days and hours you actually have to do your work each month, especially at year-end, if you spent only 30 minutes on each donor per month, you’d barely make it through your whole caseload. If you don’t have a plan for each of your donors, you’ll never make it.

This is especially true at year-end, when your donors are hearing messages of gratitude and generosity from every organization out there, and when most donors make a gift. 

It’s an overwhelming time of year. For everyone.

So, what can you do about it? 

Managers: 

Remember to notice and celebrate how hard your fundraisers are working and partner with them to take care of themselves. (Also, remember to take care of yourself.)

Help them optimize their energy levels, rather than optimizing their virtual or physical presence in the office. 

Remove barriers and provide needed support (such as ensuring they have data/IT/administrative support and donor offers to use).

Only invite frontline fundraisers to meetings they need to attend. Ask yourself, “Can this meeting wait until January?” or “Can it be covered in a quick email?” Circulate the agenda beforehand listing clear goals, and focus the meeting time itself on discussion, debate, and decisions. 

Frontline Fundraisers:

Be empowered to prioritize donors over all other work. Block large swaths of time on your calendars for deep, high-value donor work. Mark it “out of office” so it automatically declines meeting invites, if that helps. Don’t just assume your to-do list will get done. Plan it out and make it so. 

With apologies to HR and the effort that’s gone into the all-staff secret Santa, consider working from home that day. There will probably be another party on Valentine’s Day.

Pause notifications. Certainly pause notifications from Slack or Teams or email, and I pray you’ve been pausing your social media and breaking news alerts since at least 2016. It can wait.

Recognize the tyranny of the urgent. Is this cross-functional team’s deadline more important than the thoughtful solicitation you’re developing? How many items on your enormous to-do list can wait until the new year (or, maybe, don’t need to be done at all)? Do you really have to fix the heading on your stationary or attend the business journal’s monthly networking breakfast? 

I know I told you to blow off your colleagues above in favor of deep, high-value work. Don’t use that as license to LARP the job this season and still get distracted.

Focus on the most important year-end tasks: gratitude for everyone, and thoughtful solicitations for the many donors who can and do give now. 

Lean into your deepest, highest-value work, and you’ll finish the year strong. 

25 workdays until 2025. You’ve got this.

Matt 

Matt Gill is a Client Experience Leader at Veritus with over two decades of leadership, fundraising, and storytelling experience. He has served in major gifts and fundraising leadership roles for several large human services nonprofits, and as a board member, volunteer, and co-founder with a number of smaller organizations. He spent more than 11 years on active duty with the Navy in special operations and public affairs. Matt continues to serve as a public affairs officer in the Navy Reserves, where he holds the rank of Commander. He is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, the Naval War College, and the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey School of Public Affairs.