Monday Mixtape 016: Summertime Fundraising Planning

Monday Mixtape 016: Summertime Fundraising Planning

Is your year flying by?

It’s June. School is out or will be in a few weeks. We’re creeping up on the halfway point on the calendar year.

How did this happen? I’m not ready!

If you’re feeling like you need to reclaim your time and get this year back on track, you’re not alone. If you’re crushing 2018, keep up the good work!

Either way, this week’s mixtape is full of resources to keep you focused on what’s important, and inspire you to continue to refine your processes. If summer is your nonprofit’s “slower” season, it’s a great time to build the habits you want in place in the fall.

Here’s this week’s mix:

“A hero is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself.” —Joseph Campbell

Track #1: Are You Having Trouble Focusing? These Simple Strategies Will Help, by Rasmus Hougaard and Jacqueline Carter at Harvard Business Review

Maybe it’s because it’s beautiful outside, but it’s hard to stay focused all day long during the summer. This piece from Harvard Business Review talks about what influences focus, and how to harness yours. Drawing from surveys and assessments of more than 35,000 leaders in more than 100 countries, the authors found, “73% of leaders feel distracted from their current task either ‘some’ or ‘most’ of the time.” Take a look at the graph that tracks focus levels during the day, and see if it lines up with your personal clock. It sure did mine!

Track #2: 6 Ways To Make The Most Of Summer Downtime, by Emily Hunsaker at CauseVox

For many nonprofits, fundraising slows down over the summer. Emily has six great ideas for using the time wisely, including fundraising planning, prospect research, auditing your marketing, and hosting a simple fundraiser. When the busy fall hits, you’ll be ready!

Weekly Wow

Kenny Kane is the CEO of the Testicular Cancer Foundation, an organization that rallies thousands of advocates each year in support of their cause, shares six ways they’ve used CauseVox to run their community-driven fundraising.

You can read his tips and insights here.

Track #3: The Weekly Checklist: The Key To Ninja Productivity, by Graham Allcott at Think Productive

If you want to develop a new habit over the summer, consider a weekly checklist. The idea is to develop a detailed list that you use once a week to track your progress and plan your upcoming tasks. This is a little more involved than a simple to-do list, and I suspect I would be much more on top of things if I used one like it. Graham shares his own checklist, and a checklist template (no forms or email signup required to view it, FYI). I especially like the questions Graham asks himself every week.

Track #4: 13 Creative Summer Fundraising Ideas + People Fundraising Tips To Get You Started, by Tina Jepson at CauseVox

Looking for ways to rally your community this summer? This post offers thirteen summer-specific ideas, and community-driven fundraising tips to go with them. Tina also has suggestions for leveraging fundraising events into learning and marketing opportunities for your organization. More ice cream socials, please!

Bonus Tracks

Back to work, better than ever!

Bad habits? Try curiosity.

By The Way…

Last month we partnered with Brady Josephson from NextAfter, a nonprofit fundraising optimization firm, to cover the 10 key elements of a great fundraising email, based on 218 experiments, and uncover the ONE underlying secret behind successful email campaigns.

Missed it? Want to watch it again? We’ve got you covered!

You can watch the training on-demand and download the slides. It was packed with insights!

Thanks for reading!

– Megan

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P.S. Questions about this week’s mix? Suggestions for next week? Don’t leave me in the dark. Let me know by emailing me at blog@causevox.com.