Latest / The Nonprofit Podcast / Ep 212| The Nonprofit Starvation Cycle: Why Good Fundraisers Burn Out

Transcript

Ep 212| The Nonprofit Starvation Cycle: Why Good Fundraisers Burn Out · The Nonprofit Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: Let's sit here for a minute.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_01: Many of the fundraisers I'm talking to, and I mean fundraisers who are deeply enmeshed, they're in the thick of it.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_01: Most of us have this thing we tell ourselves that we're just one system away from finally feeling like we're gonna be on top of it.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_01: Just a little bit more organized, maybe a little bit more strategic.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_01: And that belief didn't come from nowhere.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_01: It is costing your organization in ways that are invisible.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_01: They're not gonna show up on this year's balance sheet, but they will sure show up somewhere.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_01: The Nonprofit Podcast, powered by DonorBucks.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to the Nonprofit Podcast.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_01: I'm Britt Stockert, fundraiser coach at DonorBox.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_01: Each week we bring you practical information, clear insights, and inspiration to help you raise more, reach further, and take your nonprofit to the next level.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_01: Let's talk about what the capacity gap actually is.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_01: It's one of those things that's almost easier to feel, I think, than to define it.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's the distance between what your organization actually needs to raise money sustainably and do the actual work and what you're actually resourced to do.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_01: That is it.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_01: That's the whole thing.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_01: It might show up in your tech, in your professional development budget that probably doesn't exist, in your overbooked calendar, where there's literally zero white space, and whether your leadership genuinely treats fundraising as an org-wide strategy, or whether they just kind of hope the dollars miraculously sprout from somewhere.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_01: Right now, that gap, it's getting wider.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_01: The nonprofit finance fund surveyed over 2,200 organizations.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_01: What they found is that 85% of nonprofits expect service demand to keep increasing.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_01: 36% ended last year, operating at a deficit.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_01: That is the highest number in 10 years.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_01: We have more need coming through the door.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_01: Less financial runway to meet it.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_01: And the fundraisers that are listening in right now, you're standing right in the middle of this gap.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_01: You're being asked to close it.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_01: Now layer on what's happening with your donors.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_01: Fundraising effectiveness project.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_01: I love the work they're doing.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_01: They've been tracking this for years now.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, total dollars looks okay on paper, right?
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_01: But that number, it's masking something underneath that is serious.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_01: Donor participation is down.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_01: We're talking about the clustering around existing support.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_01: Sure, but we're losing donors faster than we're replacing them.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_01: We also know that first year donor retention, those are your new donors coming back for a second gift.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_01: The report has called out that the sector's most consequential, unsolved problem is moving them to make that second gift.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_01: We are losing roughly eight out of 10 new donors before we even give them a second shot.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_01: So you can't build retention, you can't close this gap without infrastructure and actual support to do relationship work.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_01: And many of the organizations I'm talking to are admitting to me, they're like, Britt, we've never properly been resourced for that to begin with.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_01: So where does this gap show up?
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_01: What does this actually look like on the ground?
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_01: I think we need to bring this to light and surface it.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_01: Well, picture the development manager.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_01: You know who you are.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_01: You know you need to call a lapse donor this week, right?
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_01: You have a list, has 200 names on it.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_01: Then there's a grant deadline Friday.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_01: Your executive director just forwarded something marked urgent.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_01: That call, it's not gonna happen.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_01: Be honest.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_01: You wait, you wait, you wait.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_01: A year passes.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_01: And then by then it feels so dang awkward to reach out that you just don't.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_01: Or what about the CRM that your team works so hard to implement, but nobody uses it correctly because there's no training budget.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_01: The donor records, they're full of dupes, duplicates.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_01: Your donor segments are messy, and good luck pulling a reliable major donor report because it's gonna take more than a few hours that nobody has.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_01: So you work around it and your data just gets worse.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_01: Or the monthly giving program that launched with so much love and energy.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_01: I coach on this.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_01: It looks great.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_01: You built out the tailored messaging on your website.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_01: You have an actual giving program, all the recognition piece, how you're gonna steward them, but no one has touched that recognition side of it in 18 months because the person that is taking the lead on a monthly giving program is running the annual gala and four other things.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_01: You see, that's it's the same problem every time.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_01: The work requires more than your organization is willing or able to invest.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_01: This is the gap between those two things, is what I'm talking about, where fundraisers are absorbing this in your bodies every single day.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_01: And that is the piece that is missing from all of these conversations that we're having about burnout.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_01: When a major gifts portfolio goes cold, organizations they put it on the individual, right?
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_01: They call it a performance issue.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_01: If a fundraiser on your team burns out and then they say, see ya, I'm out.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_01: Leadership, they call it a pipeline problem.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_01: I have watched organizations let go of genuinely top talented kick butt fundraisers because they refuse to take an honest look at what the system was actually asking of them.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_01: That's a capacity problem that got relabeled.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_01: So nobody has to fix the root cause.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_01: The Urban Institute, I'm throwing out some sources here, y'all.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_01: This is so important.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_01: They released data earlier this year showing that nonprofit leaders' concerns about workplace, staffing, burnout, compensation have intensified significantly from 2024 to 2025.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_01: One leader in that report said it to them straight.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_01: We risk losing key personnel and being forced to scale back our core operations right now.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_01: Is any of this landing for you?
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_01: I want to spend a minute on technology, specifically because it would be a disservice if I if I didn't, right?
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_01: I work as a fundraiser coach in nonprofit tech.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_01: I have to say something about this.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_01: Bridge span.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_01: They looked at how nonprofits actually spend their technology budgets.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_01: On average, 54% goes to hardware.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_01: Well, guess what?
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_01: 1% goes to training.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_01: 1%.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_01: We buy the shiny new tools, and then we don't give the people what they need to be ready to use them.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_01: In that Bridge Span report, they documented there was one organization that received a million-dollar grant specifically for a Salesforce implementation.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_01: Well, guess what?
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_01: A year later, the program manager admitted they weren't sure anyone even knew how to log in anymore.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_01: A million dollars all.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_01: And the grant covered the software, but nothing else.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_01: Typical, right?
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_01: No training, no actual paid staff to maintain it.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_01: Lucky for me, when I was leading a human service agency, a local Salesforce company offered six years of pro bono professional services for implementation, for customization and automation.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_01: But I know this is not the case for most of y'all folks, right?
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_01: What happened in that bridge stand example is that a structural problem got dressed up as an individual, a discipline problem.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_01: And we know a tool without training, without someone whose actual job it is to keep the system running.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_01: It's not like the tool is a problem.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_01: This is a regular pattern.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_01: And Stanford Social Innovation Review calls it the nonprofit starvation cycle.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_01: Funders pressure organizations like yours to keep your overhead low.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_01: Organizations underfund your infrastructure.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_01: And then that weaken infrastructure makes it hard to deliver impact, which makes funders less confident, which makes them more restrictive about overhead.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_01: And around and around we go.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_01: But this tech piece is really just one itty bitty little symptom.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_01: There's a larger human cost at play.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_01: Fundraising, it's relational work.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_01: It requires you to show up with genuine warmth and real presence for all of your supporters, for your community.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_01: Heck, I would argue even for your colleagues on the days when no one else is asking how they're doing.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_01: Questioning whether this sector deserves us.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_01: What I know from my own time as an executive director is sure, you can hold it together for a long time.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_01: You can convince yourself that this is just part of the job.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_01: I know I did.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_01: I had staff.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_01: We had thousands of family we were in community with, working with, serving.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_01: My kids were home because COVID, schools had closed, and nobody was asking if I was okay.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_01: Part of that was on me.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't ask for help.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't know how.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_01: I told myself that showing even one little crack meant everything would fall apart.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_01: It took me so many years to understand that the crack wasn't failure.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_01: The crack was simply a breakdown in information.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_01: When fundraisers hit the same wall, there's a flatness that happens, right?
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_01: We dissociate and the emails or communications or interactions, sure, they they might be technically fine, but something is missing at the core of them.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_01: Your supporters, your donors, they're gonna feel that.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_01: And they can't always name it, but they're gonna feel that.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: The whole sector runs on people believing in people.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_01: This is the engine to the work we're doing.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_01: One more source for you.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_01: This is so important.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_01: The nonprofit finance fund found that nearly a quarter of nonprofit workers, we're talking 2.4 million people, are earning a paycheck and still cannot afford basics.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_01: Imagine housing, childcare, transportation, diapers.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_01: We are asking people in our sector to close the gap between community need, organizational capacity, while they're living that gap themselves.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_01: So, where do we go from here?
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_01: Well, fundraisers, fundraiser to fundraiser, I think we got to start naming that gap out loud.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_01: Let's track where our time is actually going, what's falling through the cracks, what is it costing in real retention numbers, but also that human cost.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_01: What is it costing us on our bodies?
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_01: We cannot make a case for more capacity if leadership cannot see that gap.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_01: You gotta document it.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_01: Not to complain, speak up to make the invisible visible.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_01: Executive directors, okay.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_01: This conversation belongs in your budget process.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_01: Not after you've already missed your revenue goals update at the board meeting.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_01: What does it actually cost to run a development operation focused on retention?
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_01: Does what you're investing in fundraising infrastructure match what you're asking it to produce?
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_01: And if the answer is no, well, that is not your fundraiser's problem.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_01: That is a you problem.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_01: And board members, you set the conditions.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_01: When you're asking why retention is sliding, the question underneath all of this is whether you're funding the capacity to do it any differently.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_01: What do you expect?
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_01: When you run a development office at half the staffing it needs, you're not saving money.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_01: What you're doing is you're borrowing against your donor relationships and your entire team's health.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_01: And sure, that bill won't come now, but it will come sure enough.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_01: It's gonna land on a future balance sheet.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_01: So I think the takeaway here is the fundraising capacity gap.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_01: It's real and it's always almost completely invisible, which is exactly what makes it so hard to fix.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_01: Before you pick up a new framework, before you consider a new tool, take an honest look at what you're actually working with.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_01: What is it gonna cost you to leave it the way it is?
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_01: I am here to help.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_01: If you want help with this conversation, I'm offering free one-hour discovery session, strategy sessions.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_01: We'll look at what's actually working and we're gonna figure out what's realistic for your team.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna drop my scheduling link in the show notes.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for hanging out with me today on the Nonprofit Podcast.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_01: Your work matters, and I am so glad to be in your corner.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_01: Share this with a colleague who needs to hear it, leave us a review, and I will see you next week.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: That warm feeling when you help someone, it's not just happiness, it's fulfillment.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: And we believe it should be available to everyone from frontline heroes to first time fundraisers.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: Our tools empower you to help others.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: This is our mission.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: This is Donorbox, helping you help others.