Everyone I know has gone through a slump.  By slump, I mean a period of time when things either just don’t seem to go your way or, for all your hard work, there is little return.
It happens to the best of us.  Thankfully, it doesn’t make national news like when a baseball player goes 0-45 at the plate or a team loses 20 games in a row.  But, for you personally, it can be demoralizing, despairing and can lead you to depression.
If you’re working in fundraising it can be extremely frustrating and, in many cases, it can lead to doubting yourself and your own abilities.  If you are currently going through a slump, or have gone through one in the past, here are some ideas to shake yourself out of it.

1. Take time to analyze what you are doing — Are you doing the right things?  Is what you are “presenting” to donors compelling?  Are you thoughtfully matching up your projects and programs to the right donors?  Donors do not respond well when you have not done your homework and placed compelling, inspiring programs in front of them.  Sometimes we can lose our way and get swayed by program or upper management to push a program on donors that WE know they don’t want, but believe we have to do it.  I guarantee you, that will lead to “hearing crickets” from your donors.
2. Review each donor on your caseload and discover something new about each one — What you are doing here is getting out of old patterns and thoughts about your donors and forcing yourself to learn something new that may unlock a specific action you hadn’t thought of previously.  Perhaps you will find a new hobby or past job your donor had that you can connect with.  Who knows the possibilities, but this exercise shakes things up.
3. Look for low-hanging fruit — There may be a few donors on your file who are almost ready to make a gift.  Concentrate some quality time on them and get a couple of “wins” in the next 30 days.  There is nothing better for getting out of a slump than a little win.  I see this in professional baseball all the time.   A hitter goes 0-27 at the plate and then he’ll bunt the ball to try and get on base. “Yes, that felt good,” he thinks, and before you know it, the guy is hitting like he did before.  This happens all the time.
4. Bring a team together — Whenever I’ve been in a slump I find it helpful to bring people with different perspectives together to give me a fresh look at what I’m doing and brainstorm.  I put the concerns I’m having out on the table and ask for new ideas that I may be missing.  It has really worked wonders for me.  Even bringing people in who don’t know fundraising can be helpful because can you get some really innovative ideas.  I think fundraisers inherently have a hard time doing this because either they believe they need to have all the answers or are competitive and don’t want to admit they’re in a slump.
5. Don’t try so hard — There have been many times when I was going through a tough period that I just kept trying and trying, yet the more I tried, the worse it got.  When I was able to loosen the grip a bit, I found things started to open up and work again.  Sometimes doing too much gets you absolutely nowhere.  Let go a little bit, give yourself some space and have some patience.

There you go.  Five ways to help you get out of your slump and back on track again.  It’s absolutely no fun being in a slump.  However, being in one can allow you to regroup, rethink and rediscover the joy of working with your donors.
And remember, in the end… it WILL work out.
For anyone out there in the Passionate Giving community who has ideas to share regarding getting out of a slump, please do.  Richard and I, along with all our readers, would love to hear from you.
Jeff