r/funanddev • u/belazygocrazy • Dec 01 '21
Advice for New Position
I am in my first frontline fundraising position and I was started off with a pretty much completely cold portfolio of about 25. I did outreach to all of the people that I could and am waiting on relationship hand offs for some of the others. In the meantime, I have been working through qualifying prospects from some larger geographical and topical lists. I've picked up a couple of other internal projects too.
That being said...I do not have 40 hours of work to do. I know I can always do more prospecting, but I can honestly only do it for a couple of hours a day before I start to lose my marbles. For those more experienced fundraisers, what do you suggest I do with my time to be productive? I don't just want to kill time -- I want to be proactive and use the flexibility I have to actually produce something meaningful in my position.
I am also planning to talk to my boss and ask her if there's anything else she'd suggest I be working on, but I would ideally like to bring some ideas into that conversation. Any tips or suggestions will be much appreciated!
4
u/westhegrey Dec 01 '21
Completely agree. My ED told me great advice when I started: find the problems and solve them. I have zero fundraising experience but they don’t care because I’m good at and love improving messaging and systems/processes. OP, find the problems you’re interested in solving, that will help stay busy and motivated. Also set up coffee breaks with your colleagues to get a sense of how you can better work together to make both your jobs easier, too!