This year has taught many of us that we can work from anywhere (including our homes). But that doesn’t mean — and shouldn’t mean — we always have to work.
COVID Changed Everything
Pre-pandemic, many development directors felt they were always working. But since they didn’t “work from home” (as much) there was likely more of a separation of work and home.
In this post-pandemic world, where many development directors spent so much of 2020 working from home, there’s a new balance — a new rather unexpected dynamic.
After a full workday at the office, are you expected to work from home in the evening too? Or over the weekends? Just because you’ve proven you can?
With this new expectation in our sector, how can you possibly achieve a work-life balance?
Take a Cue from My Work-Life Balance
I’ve worked from home for more than a decade.
When I resigned from my last full-time fundraising job at a nonprofit to become a fundraising consultant, many people asked how I would manage working from home. Honestly, I wasn’t sure.
Would I be tempted to watch TV all day?
Would laundry and other chores distract me from my work?
The reality is that I’m too busy to watch TV all day. And doing laundry in the middle of the day is how I achieve work-life balance. That’s a perk of working from home. Yes, I do laundry in the middle of the day, but I also work at 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. And I take a three-hour break in the middle of the day to get my kids after school and make dinner.
I don’t feel like I’m working ’round the clock, even when I get up and work first thing in the morning, and then continue to work after dinner.
Why? Because I have that break in the middle of the day. That break helps me achieve work-life balance.
It’s all about flexibility.
Case in point — I’m at the beach this week. I’m checking my emails a few times per day, and mostly enjoying the sunshine with my family. I kept only one meeting on my calendar — my regular, monthly meeting with those in Mastering Major Gifts.
Doing this means I have the ultimate flexibility to work from anywhere.
3 Ways to Achieve Work-Life Balance at a Nonprofit
You may not have the luxury to completely design your schedule, but I hope this year has provided all nonprofit leaders some new tools to help promote work-life balance.
1. Adopt a flexible work schedule (with permission from your boss).
After I had my first baby (17 years ago) and was getting to return to work from maternity leave, I knew I needed one day off to maintain my sanity.
I told my boss I didn’t want to work on Fridays anymore. She wasn’t happy about it (and I was prepared to quit or be fired), but we agreed to 80% pay for a 4-day workweek. This was a first for the organization, but I decided what was and wasn’t negotiable and we were able to come to an agreement.
Not only that, I was able to carry that agreement (4 days for 80% pay) to my next job as a development director. The lesson here? You never know until you ask.
Maybe it’s that you want to pick your kids up after school, so you’ll work in the office from nine to three, and then work for an hour or two more in the evenings. Consider some options and then negotiate a bit.
2. Aim for progress, not perfection.
I’m guessing there’s a typo or two in this post. Maybe more. It’s not that I’m happy about typos, but it’s more important to get the post up and out than to make sure it’s perfect. The reality is, I could keep working on all of my projects forever, but at some point, it’s more important to let them go and move onto the next thing.
I look back at my books and cringe, because I know I could have done better. And yet, thousands of professional fundraisers have gotten tons of value from them. Can you imagine if I had held onto my first book until it was “perfect” (if there even is such a thing)? I would have never gotten around to writing the second or third books.
If you can, identify systems and processes to help you get things moving. For example, after two sets of revisions, the newsletter, or annual appeal, or annual report goes to the printer. Make those two sets of revisions count and then let it go.
3. Work in cycles, not a straight line.
If you have a gala coming up or some other huge deadlines, you may not be able to maintain balance at all times. So plan around that and try to take some days off during slower months of the year.
Does your office have Fridays off in the summer? Maybe it’s something to consider for July and August to compensate for all the extra hours you’ll be putting in this fall.
Maintaining a comfortable work-life balance is important for so many reasons, not the least of which is to maintain your productivity (and sanity).
So treat this with the importance it deserves. You’re worth it, right?
A Final Note
Let’s address the elephant in the room. Development meetings seem to suck up more time than anything at most workplaces. See my recent post on “boring meetings” for ways to improve and shorten your meetings.
What are some ways you achieve work-life balance? Let me know in the comments.
You are spot on. Flexibility is the key. I try to take advantage of the “down” periods we have to maximize my physical and emotional state of mind. Working in a small shop with two staffers, we also take time to celebrate our “wins” – event success, achieving financial goals, etc. This is always done off campus, typically on a Friday so we can relax with time away from the office.
Thanks so much for your amazing advice and insight! I’m going to try to put some of your suggestions in place this week and see what else is doable.
Thank you for bringing up this important topic.I once read an article that questioned the term work/life balance, countering that what we need is LIFE balance. When I adopted that philosophy as a consultant 19 years ago, I have found my sustainable balance.
I’ve been doing nonprofit fundraising for over 40 years, and I’ve “sat on all sides of the table” as they say. I’ve experienced burn-out at positions, and typically at the five year mark would seek a change. Here’s an unanticipated bonus of finding this LIFE balance strategy – at 74 I can continue to work, make a contribution to organizations and our field by determining my own pace. Why retire?
These are simple, yet brilliant suggestions.
#2 especially resonates with me as I am known to say, probably far too often, that “perfect is the enemy of finished.” Most of my colleagues are perfectionists and it can be difficult to complete anything. After reading what you wrote, adopting the tactic of gently pointing out what finishing something now means, might be useful. For example, “I know you’re not 100% thrilled with how your narrative on this grant proposal turned out, but if we get it printed now that will give us enough time to account for traffic.” Yes, we once missed the deadline for a significant grant that had to be physically submitted because a colleague was wordsmithing down to the wire. It was 15 minutes late and the refused to accept it.
Thanks for sharing these. After over 30 years in the nonprofit sector, I now do fundraising for a City Human Services Department with a supporting nonprofit. The work/life balance is better, but still not ideal. I hope the pandemic makes all of us, regardless of sector, more assertive when it comes to work/life balance. It’s overdue in our culture.
Hi Amy, as always, you deliver what’s needed–I just had a meeting with my boss where my holiday time off request was granted, but not without pushback. Feeling discouraged, I took the internet to try to find examples of the importance of work-life balance in fundraising and this was just what I needed to hear. This gives me some good inspirations for future conversations where I may need to advocate for myself and my team to feel free to take the time they need to rest and rejuvenate and spend quality time with loved ones, both during the holidays and year-round. Thank you!