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Best Self-Care Strategies for Nonprofit Professionals

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A guest post by Kyle Cannon of MassageBook

As a nonprofit professional, you know firsthand just how hectic your job is. From procuring auction items for an upcoming fundraiser, to managing your marketing strategy, to applying for grants, there’s always plenty for professionals at small or medium nonprofits to do.

However, when tasks pile up and deadlines get closer, stress builds. And with stress comes a host of negative effects, including burnout.

To combat these effects and ensure you have a long and fulfilling nonprofit career, it’s important to prioritize self-care. Let’s explore the benefits of self-care and some top strategies for staying physically, mentally, and emotionally healthy through the ups and downs in your role.

Why is self-care important for nonprofit professionals?

Self-care, job satisfaction, and employee engagement are all common priorities of businesses, but there needs to be more focus placed on them at nonprofits. Even if they’re passionate about their mission-driven work, nonprofit employees are just as susceptible to the negative effects of work stress. After all, stress can take a toll on their:

  • Quality of life. Chronic or long-term stress can disrupt your body’s processes and put you at increased risk of physical and mental health problems, including anxiety, depression, headaches, and heart disease. It’s also been shown to impair memory and concentration.
  • Quality of work. A lowered quality of life reduces the quality of work. Stressed employees are less engaged in their roles, have reduced focus and productivity, are more frequently absent or tardy, and generally perform more poorly than their less stressed coworkers.

With 83% of workers in the U.S. saying that they suffer from daily work-related stress and 52% experiencing burnout, it’s clear that self-care is more crucial now than ever. You don’t have to work in the massage industry to worry about self-care—start forming good habits today to stay satisfied and fulfilled in your role!

Best Self-Care Strategies for Nonprofit Professionals

Let’s start by looking at ways nonprofit professionals can take self-care into their own hands.

Time Management

Establishing great time management habits is a form of self-care—after all, these practices help you complete your tasks promptly, resulting in less stress. If you’re looking to start prioritizing time management, try one of these tips:

  • Choose a top priority. To stay focused, choose a top priority you commit to completing before the end of the day. For example, if you’re tasked with looking for corporate sponsors for an upcoming event, your priority might be to schedule meetings with three sponsors today. This practice helps you stay accountable and ensures you complete your most important tasks.
  • Break big tasks down. When faced with what seems like an insurmountable task, many professionals feel they don’t know where to start, causing them to procrastinate and waste time. Instead of tackling the task head-on, break it down into smaller steps to make it feel more approachable. Plus, you’ll feel good about completing each step, motivating you to continue your hard work.
  • Reduce distractions. This might mean closing your email when trying to focus, buying noise-canceling headphones in a loud office, or even putting your cell phone away. Additionally, avoid multitasking, as research has shown that it actually takes a toll on productivity.

You may be called on to handle large projects or tasks that require a lot of work at certain times and much less work during other times, such as creating and sending out multichannel marketing materials for your upcoming event. Having a strong grasp of time management will ensure that you’re able to get your work done and take care of yourself even during particularly busy or stressful periods.

Work-Life Balance

Although work is an important part of our lives, it isn’t and shouldn’t be everything. You need the space to relax and do other activities that are important to you. That’s why mastering work-life balance is so crucial.

Here are a few tips to help you develop a better work-life balance:

  • Take breaks throughout the workday.
  • Use your vacation time.
  • Don’t let work bleed into your personal time.

Set aside time to relax and engage in your hobbies when you’re finished with work. This could mean watching Netflix, reading a book, or playing disc golf with friends.

If you’re feeling any physical effects of stress, be sure to get treated as well. While some effects such as heart palpitations and high blood pressure will require a medical provider’s attention, if you’re experiencing less severe effects such as stiffness or mild headaches, a massage might be enough to help you feel better. According to MassageBook, certain practitioners accept health insurance for their services, making massages more affordable for stressed nonprofit professionals.

Best Self-Care Strategies for Nonprofit Organizations

If you’re a nonprofit leader or director, you should both prioritize your self-care and consider how you can encourage your staff to participate in self-care. Here are a few ways you can support your nonprofit’s employees:

  • Add more flexible work options. Although 9-5 in-office is traditional, your employees can benefit from more flexible work arrangements that fit their needs. This might mean offering remote or hybrid work or even flexible hours. For example, instead of requiring employees to work from 9 AM to 5 PM, ask them to work 8 hours anytime between 7 AM and 7 PM.
  • Establish dedicated employee wellness programs. This might mean offering a gym membership stipend as part of their compensation package, offering healthy catered food options for lunch, or partnering with other wellness businesses to promote employee wellness.
  • Create a supportive workplace culture. A negative workplace culture can contribute to more stress and anxiety among employees. Take the time to create a supportive culture where employees feel empowered to do their best. Encourage employees to show appreciation for each other so everyone feels recognized for their hard work.

Additionally, if you’re serious about improving self-care for your nonprofit employees, consider streamlining their workflow with software. Just like a massage business would purchase massage therapy software to reduce its employees’ workload, your nonprofit might benefit from software that automates everyday responsibilities.

The first tech solution nonprofits should consider is a constituent relationship management solution (CRM). These tools allow you to gather key information about your supporters to improve future stewardship and marketing efforts. Check out this list of top platforms from Bonterra to get started.

 

Kyle Cannon head shotKyle Cannon

Kyle is the product evangelist at MassageBook. He’s spent the past 8+ years developing a deep understanding of the joys and struggles massage therapists face daily, and he’s committed to helping them simplify and grow their practices every step of the way.

Fundraising Tuesday: How Passive Fundraising Can Boost Your Nonprofit’s Revenue

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A guest post by Korri Piper of ShopRaise

Imagine launching another new fundraiser for your nonprofit’s cause without having to invest in event promotion or ask donors to give more out of their own pockets. Passive fundraising can make that dream a reality!

ShopRaise’s passive fundraising guide points out that there are still a few active steps you must take to make these campaigns successful, such as thanking participants and marketing—but this is a small effort compared to other fundraising activities. Plus, these low-hassle initiatives offer a high return on investment as small contributions add up over time.

Let’s unpack a few ways that passive fundraising can boost your nonprofit’s revenue.

Provides a steady revenue stream

Because passive fundraisers can be run year-round, they create a dependable stream of revenue that supplements income from your other campaigns. For example, donors can continue participating in your shopping fundraiser every time they make an online purchase, even if you also host a one-time virtual or in-person event.

With this steady source of income, your nonprofit can:

  • Increase its financial sustainability: Passive fundraisers allow nonprofits to collect donations fairly steadily. This way, you can predict your income more easily and stabilize your financial health.
  • Reduce the pressure to fundraise: When your nonprofit needs funds, you might be scrambling to find a successful fundraising idea. Passive fundraisers provide a steady source of income to sustain your operations without constantly planning new campaigns.
  • Use resources efficiently: Generating income passively enables your nonprofit to allocate its resources to mission-critical activities. For example, a matching gifts tool that automates match requests can double the donations you already receive, providing more income that your nonprofit can use to develop its programs or improve community outreach.

Plus, when you host passive fundraisers alongside your other campaigns, you’ll receive funds from a variety of sources. This way, your nonprofit can recover quickly in case a funding source falls through or you incur higher expenses than expected.

Increases donor engagement

Donor data collection, segmentation strategies, and personalization likely describe your nonprofit’s donor engagement plan. In addition to these strategies, passive fundraising offers a unique way to catch their attention and keep them interested in giving.

Let’s take a look at the ways passive campaigns lead to increased engagement using the example of a shopping fundraiser:

  • They make giving convenient: Passive fundraisers allow donors to contribute without altering their regular routines. With a shopping fundraiser, donors can participate simply by downloading an app or browser extension and making purchases online as usual. This makes donors more willing to participate in your fundraiser.
  • They deepen donor involvement: Since they require such little effort, passive fundraisers ease your donors into increasing amounts of support. Using our example of shopping fundraisers, supporters connect with your organization first by shopping for your cause. Over time, their small contributions will keep your mission top-of-mind and can encourage them to explore other involvement opportunities, especially if you thank them for their contributions.
  • They create a sense of community: By helping donors give in easy ways, passive fundraisers let supporters feel like a part of your nonprofit’s community. Donors can serve the common goal of contributing to your mission through everyday activities, such as shopping online.

Passive fundraisers don’t just increase engagement—they also help you engage more donors. The low commitment of these campaigns makes them accessible to a wider range of donors. This way, your nonprofit can raise more by reaching more donors.

Keeps fundraising costs to a minimum

The saying “You have to spend money to make money” is often true for nonprofit fundraising—most campaigns are an investment. Whether you pay for a venue, tech support, or an omnichannel marketing campaign, the costs can quickly add up.

Passive fundraisers, on the other hand, are designed to generate funds with little to no direct expense. They’re highly cost-effective and help you raise more by spending less. Here’s how:

  • They minimize upfront costs: Setting up a passive fundraiser requires little to no upfront spending, depending on the type of fundraiser you run. Also, many of these fundraisers, like gift card campaigns, raise unrestricted revenue that you can put toward any area of your budget.
  • They have lower administrative costs: Since passive fundraisers run themselves, most of their processes are automated. This means less spending on staffing, volunteer coordination, or other administrative costs. Some passive fundraising platforms will even provide marketing support, so you can save money on promoting your campaign as well.
  • They offer a high return on investment (ROI): Reduced costs and continuous funding make passive campaigns a lucrative fundraising method. Although individual contributions from passive fundraisers are usually small, they add up over time to make a significant difference for your mission.

Before starting a passive fundraiser, create a plan for how you’ll use the revenue from those campaigns. With a designated purpose for your passive fundraising income, you can focus instead on allocating your resources where needed to fund your initiatives and overhead expenses.

Getting Attention calls digital fundraising “one of the most effective ways to…meet supporters where they are.” This is the key to passive fundraising! Your nonprofit can boost its revenue by making donations easy for both you and your supporters. When you consider the ways it can boost your nonprofit’s revenue, passive fundraising is a no-brainer!

Korri Piper, Sales and Marketing Consultant & Director of Vendor Relationships at ShopRaise

Relationship director, project manager, writer and general life enthusiast. Let me tell you how online shopping can solve the world’s problems.

Fundraising Tuesday: How to Tailor Your Case for Support to Different Audiences

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A guest post by Bob Happy of Averill Solutions

Whether you’re launching a capital campaign or a smaller-scale fundraising initiative, a case for support is an essential tool for showing your supporters why they should give.

A case for support, also known as a case statement, is a document that outlines your campaign’s goals and needs while connecting the project back to your larger cause.

Just as important as determining what goes into your case for support is learning how to tailor it to your organization’s different audiences in your campaign marketing materials. If you can effectively adapt your core campaign messages to different groups’ needs and preferences, you’ll be better equipped to connect with them and make a compelling argument for why you need their individual support. Let’s dive in!

First Things First: Understanding Your Audiences

To cater to different audiences with your case for support, you first need to understand the various audiences you want to address. While you may want to invest in fundraising consulting services to take your research efforts to the next level, there are a few strategies you can employ on your own. These include:

  • Analyze your supporter data. Brush up on what you know about your community of supporters by turning to the data you have in your database. Take a look at what the information says about your audiences’ demographics, engagement histories, giving patterns, values, interests, and motivations. If you see that your data needs to be updated, consider investing in data appending services.
  • Solicit and apply feedback. Gather feedback about your supporters’ experiences with your organization through surveys, interviews, or focus groups. Then, demonstrate that you value that feedback by taking it into account when tailoring your case statement. This not only helps you get a more candid view of your supporters but also gives you a chance to build trust with them.
  • Segment your audience. Segmentation is the process of sorting your supporters into different groups based on shared characteristics. For instance, you might segment your supporters by giving level, volunteer status, geographic location, or even age.

Throughout this research process, your goal should be to identify a handful of distinct audiences you want to reach during your campaign.

For example, you may choose to target supporters in your local area and around the country. Within the group in your local area, you could create subgroups of those who currently volunteer, those who have volunteered in the past, and those who have not yet volunteered.

Each of these groups will respond differently to your case for support, so it’s your job to use what you know about each to tailor your marketing materials, the format of the messages, and the delivery of the message to their needs and expectations.

Let’s now jump into some tips for doing just that.

Tip #1: Address your audience’s concerns.

No matter who your specific audiences are, there are likely concerns or hurdles they face when it comes to giving to your campaign. Whether your organization is an environmental conservation nonprofit and supporters worry that the gift they can give is too small to make a difference, or your organization is a church and you know some parishioners don’t understand the importance of your annual appeal, you can be proactive in addressing any issues.

Here are some strategies for doing so:

  • Provide multiple ways to give (online, over the phone, via mail, etc.) and emphasize how quick and easy the process is.
  • Share compelling impact stories that illustrate the importance of your supporters’ gifts.
  • Assure your audience of your organization’s commitment to careful financial stewardship, giver privacy, and data security.
  • Educate your audience about non-monetary ways to support your cause, like volunteering, making in-kind gifts, doing advocacy work, or simply spreading the word about your mission.

Tip #2: Experiment with different formats.

Your different audiences will inevitably have different preferences in terms of what communication channels they use and at what frequency they like to receive your messages. Address these by experimenting with different formats and channels for your marketing materials.

Here’s an example of how you might do this:

  • First, you create a formal case for support document for use by your internal team. This includes a detailed description of your fundraising goals, projects you plan to complete with the funding you receive, and more.
  • Next, you adapt the case for support document into a print brochure that you can mail to one of your key audiences. The brochure includes compelling visuals and the key reasons your organization needs the recipients’ gifts.
  • You also use the case statement to develop a series of social media posts you can use on Instagram and Facebook. These are more concise, visual-heavy messages that stress the impact supporters can have on your beneficiaries by giving.

As you can see, using different formats will allow you not only to connect with different audiences and make a case for your campaign but also to spread out the narrative of your campaign across a variety of touchpoints. This way, when someone encounters a message about your campaign in multiple formats, the message will feel both consistent and fresh.

Tip #3: Seek feedback on the different versions of your case.

To take the guesswork out of tailoring your case for support to different audiences, consider going straight to the source and seeking feedback from your audiences on different versions of your case.

Sometimes there will be formal opportunities to do this. For instance, Averill Solutions explains that part of a feasibility study for a capital campaign involves going over your case for support with stakeholders and major givers. But in other campaign contexts, this will be a more informal process.

When you get the drafted campaign materials in front of your supporters, ask them the following questions to judge the different versions’ effectiveness:

  • Is the information easy to understand? What additional details would you like to see included?
  • Did this message evoke any specific emotions or feelings?
  • Were there any design elements that were particularly effective or ineffective?
  • Do you have any additional suggestions for improving our messages to make them more impactful or persuasive?
  • How likely are you to support the campaign based on what you’ve seen/read in this material?

Make sure you seek this feedback well ahead of launching your campaign so you have time to incorporate your supporters’ comments and suggestions into the finalized versions of your campaign materials.

For your next fundraising campaign to succeed, ensure your supporters are on board with your campaign. Tailoring your case for support to different audiences within that community is a great way to start. Use the guidance above to get started, and don’t hesitate to reach out to a fundraising consultant if you need further assistance.

Bob Happy head shotAuthor: Bob Happy

Bob Happy brings nearly 35 years of experience providing expert leadership and direction to clients across the not-for-profit sector to his current role as President of Averill Solutions.

Before forming Averill Solutions, Bob served as the Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of the nation’s largest fundraising firm. He has mentored hundreds of professional fundraising practitioners and many have joined him at Averill Fundraising Solutions.

 

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