A (0:01)

If your fundraising feels scattered, that's not a motivation problem. It's a focus problem. On January 21st at 12:00pm Eastern, I'm hosting a free training on building a major gift system that replaces chaos with clarity and pressure with consent. If leading donor conversations without forcing the moment sounds like the direction you want in 2026, check. Check the show notes for the link. Welcome to Nonprofit Lowdown. I'm your host, Rhea Wong. Hey, hey, nonprofit fam. Happy 2026. Now, I don't know about y', all, but I love a good planning sesh. But the problem that I find with planning sessions is it just ends up making you feel worse than when you first started, because it ends up being everything in the kitchen sink. And maybe it's just me, but my tiny little pea brain cannot handle all of the different things that I set out to do at the beginning of the year. So that's why I actually wanted to present to you the session that I did for my big Ask gift participants. Because instead of doing more, we're going to do less. That's right. This year, my word of the year is focus. And the truth is, as a nonprofit leader, you don't need to do more. You don't need to be on the hook for more things. What you actually need to do is to focus. You need to simplify. You need to double down on what works and ignore the rest. It's all about signal versus noise. So today I wanted to walk us through a different kind of goal setting for 2026. This is not about throwing everything in the kitchen sink. This is about saying no. This is about protecting your energy. This is about focusing on what is essential. I was really motivated to do this session because I reread essentialism by Greg McCowan. So if you have not read Essentialism, I highly recommend it. It's exactly what it sounds like. It's a book about chipping away at that which is essential and letting the rest go. Now, I know it's easier said than done, especially in the nonprofit world, where you're wearing 15 million hats and you're doing all the things. But I think the doing all the things actually keeps us in burnout mode. Fun fact. Did you know that the word priorities did not actually exist until the 1930s? Before that, there was only the word priority, which makes sense from the Latin root prior, meaning one. You can't have multiple one things at the same time. And so what I want to do with this session is to really help us identify our priority for the year. The Other thing that I think kills us as nonprofit executives is that we don't decide. We're not realistic with ourselves about the trade offs that we need to make in order to be our most effective cells. And again, I'm a word nerd. So I want to talk about the word decide. Decide. The seed comes from the same root as things like words like homicide, fratricide, and it means to kill. When we decide to do something, we are literally killing off all other options and possibilities in this session. What I'm hoping that we can do is that we can decide to make our 1 priority for the year. Now, I know you might be saying, Rhea, that's just not very realistic. I do a lot of things, and I totally hear that you can have subtasks under the priority, but I challenge you to pick one priority for the year. For some of you out here who are old enough to remember, there is a. A movie, one of my faves, called City Slickers. And in this movie, a bunch of city guys go and try to be cowboys. And Jack Palani plays the old, wise, crusty cowboy. And he says one thing. That's the secret to life. One thing. Whatever that one thing is for you. So today we are going to talk about identifying the one thing, the one ring to rule them all, so to speak. So let's get into it. By the way, if you are listening to this right now, this is going to be interactive. So if you are driving a car or doing something that requires you to focus, pay attention to something else, you can listen to it and then do the exercises later, because this will require things like pausing and writing things down and reflecting. But it is well worth it. And yeah, let's get into it. Nonprofit leaders are exhausted. You feel me out here. I talked to lots of people in 2025, and the adjective that everyone was using was tired, exhausted. We're limping to the end. 2025 was exhausting. And I don't think that 2026 is shaping out to be that much better. But one of the reasons why we are so exhausted, aside from the world at large, which we don't really have a lot of control over, because the political craziness, the geopolitical chaos, the economic chaos, et cetera, et cetera. One of the other reasons why we are so exhausted as leaders is that we are working hard on too many things that do not matter. And we spend a lot of time and energy on activities that aren't moving the needle, that aren't resulting in impact, and it burns us out so what I'd like to do with this session today is that I want us to. We're going to develop a little bit of a framework to identify and commit to one revenue driving goal for the year. What this means is that we're going to stop the fundraising theater. What I mean by that, I'll get into it a bit later, but we spend a lot of time trying to look like we're busy. But deep in our hearts, we know that some of the things that we're spending our time on, some simply are not moving the needle in your heart of hearts. You know what those are. Whether it's writing that appeal or sending a just follow up email for the millionth time, or writing a report that you know will not be written, or sending out yet another LOI to an RFP that frankly, you probably are not going to get. So what I'd like to do is to move us from busyness to leadership. Because the most important asset to protect is you. Your time, your energy, your finite amount of life on this planet. Your time is the only non renewable resource and it is the most precious. And I want you to use everything you got to move the needle in the most effective way possible. I want you to use your time in the highest leverage way possible. Ask yourself in your heart of hearts, how confident are you that your current strategy for fundraising is focused on the one thing that will generate 80% of your revenue? Now, we've all heard of the Pareto principle. If you haven't heard of the Pareto principle, it is this. That 20% of your effort is going to be responsible for 80% of your outcome. And we see this in all sorts of ways. We see this in fundraising, we see this in work, we see this in production. Have you identified the 20% that is responsible for 80% of the outcome? So just think to yourself, you can pause this right now, but are you very confident, confident, somewhat confident, not very confident, or not at all confident? Just write it down for yourself. Okay, welcome back. Second question. I want you to ask yourself. If your entire fundraising strategy that you've just identified in the previous question disappeared tomorrow, would your revenue materially change? If your strategy disappeared, would your revenue change? Pauses reflect. Welcome back. So here is how you know the difference between a strategy versus inactivity. A strategy is the choice that drives change. Inactivity is just motion. So if the so called strategy that you have is not necessarily going to affect your revenue, bottom line, materially, then you know it's an activity and not a strategy. Let's talk about fundraising theater. What do I mean by that? So I think a lot of us are guilty of this. I certainly have been. But we can define it as busyness without impact. So it's the motion that we're making. Us feel like we're busy, feel like we're doing things, feel like we're leading, but we're not. Examples of this might be things like, I don't know, spending time deciding on the hors d' oeuvres that are going to be served at the gala, or deciding to do yet another fundraiser that doesn't actually produce any fresh leads, or it looks like organizing a funder visit just as a. As a educating the field rather than designing it specifically for lead generation. We've all been there. There is no guilt. But let us be honest with ourselves about what it actually is. It is theater, not a strategy. Okay, I'm going to save the exercise, and then I want you to pause this and do it. I want you to take two minutes. I want you to list every single fundraising activity that you do right now. Don't edit it, just dump it. Two minutes. It could look like grant writing. It could look like reconciliation. It could look like donor meetings. It could look like planning the gala. It could look like board reports. It could look like designing your end of your appeal. It could look any number all the things that you do. Dump it. Make it a list. I'll see you in a second. Okay, now that you have this very long list of things, I want you to star every activity that directly, measurably, and materially drives revenue. I want you to be ruthless. And I'm going to say right now, if you have more than three stars on this list, you're probably not being brutally honest with yourself about where you're spending your time the most. So I'm going to pause this, do this exercise. Welcome back. Here is the essentialist truth that I want you to consider. It is this. There are a few actions that drive the most results. So when we talk about being an essentialist, what we're talking about is doing the right things. We want to identify and focus only on the few things that truly matter. And then we want to make it effortless. We want to make it easy to do. And that means specifically carving out time in your day to actually do it. Now, I talk to fundraisers all the time. A lot of them already know what to do. They have a strategy. What they don't have is protected time that they've given themselves to actually implement and execute on the strategy. All right. I want you to take another moment of truth for yourself with yourself. Give yourself 10 minutes for this. Here are the two what is the single most important fundraising outcome for your organization this year? What is the single most important fundraising outcome for your organization? And question two. What is the one thing you know is a waste of your time? So what is the single most important fundraising outcome for your organization this year? And what is the one thing you know is a waste of time? Take 10 minutes free write on these two questions. Welcome back. If you have been brutally honest with yourself, I'm sure you already know the answer, which is we live in a world of trade offs. And so if you're telling me that the single most important thing to do this year is to broadly speaking, let's say it's to raise $3 million underneath that, what does that look like? Does that look like continuing to build on your foundation support? Does it look like getting serious about your major gift program? Does it look like going on a major donor acquisition drive? You have to be very specific about what it is you are trying to do. Now once we have identified the single most important outcome for this year and we've identified one thing that is a waste of your time, I want us to think about elimination. The true focus comes from subtraction. Saying no is a leadership act and when we are pulled in too many different directions it is destructive to our mission and to our well being. What it ends up costing us when we end up chasing all of the different new ideas or when that board member says, hey, you know what, I heard about this ice bucket challenge. We should do one of those. No, you must. You. If you lose focus, you will lose impact, you will lose energy, you'll burn out and you will lose money on the table because you are not focused on a couple of key things that move the needle most. So here's your next exercise. We're going to call this the kill list. Now I'm going to say what the prompt is and you're going to pause this and write it down. Write down three things you are currently doing that are not moving the needle. So these are things that are nice to have but they're draining your energy and they are not resulting in actual revenue in the door. Take two minutes on this. Now I want you to say out loud to yourself once you've identified this kill list, I am going to stop doing X, X, Y and Z this year and really mean it. I'm going to stop doing X, Y and Z this year. Because X, Y and Z is diffusing your energy and your focus. Welcome back. So now we're starting to sort through all of the noise. What I want to reframe for you is to be an effective leader. It's not about doing more, it's about protecting what matters. And I think the thing that I always think about is Boxer, the horse in Animal Farm who works himself to death. And his answer to everything is, I will just work harder. Well, guess what? Hard work has gotten you probably to the point of burnout. Instead, we have to recognize that you and your time and your expertise and your energy and your spirit are the asset that we need to protect. And the way we protect that asset is that we remove the noise to create the conditions for your success. Now that we know what we're not going to do, now that we have an idea of what the most important outcome is, we are going to choose the one thing that is going to help focus us from the diffuse activities. We're going to deprioritize everything else except for this one thing. And this, friends, is the hard work of leadership. Choosing to decide to kill off all other options is what separates the truly effective leaders from the leaders who are burning out. Here's the question. If your organization could win at one fundraising outcome in the next 6 to 12 months, what would it be? You can only choose one fundraising outcome in the next 6-12-months. Pause this podcast, do some thinking, come back. Welcome back. I want you to look at what you've written down. Now there are a couple of filters that we're going to look at for this goal. Is it revenue meaningful? Does it actually impact the bottom line? Is it specific and measurable? You know when you've won and is it defensible? You can defend this to your board. Here are some examples of a good goal. Secure 10 new 6 figure donors in 12 months. Convert 50% of one time donors to monthly raise 500k from a specific gala event. It is time bound, it is specific and it is provable. So look back at the goal that you put. Revise it based on this criteria. It should be a smart goal. Write it down, paste it somewhere. What is the single most important fundraising outcome for your organization in the next six to 12 months? I want it written in one clear sentence. And by the way, to serve funsies. Email me@riawong.com if you've done this exercise. I'd love to see your goal. Okay, now that you have your goal, I want us to talk about how we organize Our day. So often what I see us doing is we walk into the office, we have a bunch of fires happening, and then we forget our one big goal. So I want to introduce this concept, Courtesy of Greg McGowan of the 3, 2, 1 goal. And this is how to organize both your quarter, your month and your day. One, if I want this goal to be true, if I want this goal to manifest, what must be true? What is the one big thing that must be true this quarter? Based on that one big thing this quarter, what must be true this this month? Based on that thing this month, what needs to be true this week? And this is how I organize my day. What must be true today? To ladder up to the one big thing, we're always asking ourselves at the beginning of the day, what is the most essential thing today? Then we allow, once we get the one most essential thing identified, then we allow ourselves two essential and urgent things. We all have must do's, but they're not the essential thing. And then three maintenance items keeping things running. So these are things that kind of need to be done. They're not necessarily the most important things, but they make the conditions possible to achieve the one big thing. So if you can organize your day in a 1, 2, 3 way. One, the day is always dedicated to the one big essential thing, two smaller but urgent things, and three little maintenance things. What that looks like is that every week there should be 90 minutes blocked off for your one big thing because if it does not exist on your calendar, it does not exist. And this one practice of making sure that you're blocking out time for the one big thing is going to change your year. You then communicate this boundary to your team and your board. This boundary is invaluable, short of like you need to go to the er, you don't move it, you don't take meetings during that time, you don't schedule anything. You say that you are unavailable because you are working on that one big thing. And then you eliminate non essential tasks that might deter you and keep you from that 90 minute block. At the end of the month, I want you to ask yourself, if someone looked at your calendar, would they see evidence that your essential gold mattered? What I mean by that is it's all well and good to say I prioritize X, Y and Z, but unless I actually prioritize it with my time and my energy, it's not actually a priority. And this is where I want to talk about when people tell me that they don't have time for something. Oh, I didn't have time to do that. I didn't have time to read that book. I didn't have time to take that meeting. I didn't have time to send that mail. Whatever it is in my mind. What I hear is it wasn't a priority for you. And that's fine, just own it. But we all have the same 24 hours in a day. If you told me you didn't have time to do it, it's because you didn't want to do it. And, and what this is as we become a lot more intentional and focused with our time, we move from being the Chief Revenue Officer or the Chief Development Officer into Chief Relationship Officer. Because fundraising is a leadership function, not a task. When we allow ourselves the spaciousness to actually consider what matters, what is most, what is most mission critical to my goal, then we start taking back control of our time, of our lives, of our energy, and driving towards the things that matter most. So this, and I know this is bold, but this means stopping all the useless meetings that aren't moving the needle. This means going in all the pointless coffee dates that aren't actually doing anything. This means stopping all the check in emails to donors who don't want to hear from you. This is your official permission slip to stop doing stuff that doesn't matter and that suck up your time. The commitment I would like for all of us to make, and please say this out loud to me, is I commit to leading fundraising by focusing on what matters and letting go of what doesn't. So say it with me people. I commit to leading fundraising by focusing on what matters and letting go of what doesn't. As we head into 2026, I just want you to know that clarity is a choice, focus is a discipline, and revenue follows leadership. I am always surprised at how my clients are getting extraordinary results by just a little bit of focus on the things that matter. Things like picking up the phone, things like talking to your donors, things like actually making the time to send out a survey to see who is interested in raising their hands to get more involved. And the more you're carving out time to do the essential work that moves the needle on revenue, the more money you're going to raise. Now, final thoughts here. I know some of you will need a little bit more support in goal setting and so I've actually created a custom GPT that will help you operationalize based on your capacity. It's organized by quarters, it's only available if you have the paid version of ChatGPT. I will include it in the show notes. But if you have identified your one goal and you are absolutely crystal clear about that, I have no doubt. And if you keep it front of mind for you as you plan out your daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly activities, I have no doubt that you are absolutely going to be further along this time next year than you were last year. And the the thing about this particular work is it's like, it's like flying an airplane though. Obviously if you've never flown an airplane, but it takes small adjustments over time in order for to you you to end up where you want to go. The first step is to actually identify where it is you're trying to go and to make the adjustments as necessary. All right. I hope this is a good start to your 2026 goal setting. Send me an email. Would love to know what your goals are and I will see you next week. Hey fundraisers. Looking to nail those big fundraising asks? Check out my Big Ask gift program@riawong.com Bag say goodbye to uncertainty and hello to confidence with my program. Get expert strategies and personalized support to secure those game changing donations. Don't let fear hold you back. Join me and take your fundraising to new heights. We're enrolling now@riawong.com bag. That's riawong.com bag. So if you like big asks and you cannot lie, I'll see you in the program.