Are you a workaholic fundraiser? Take the quiz!

Click a checkbox if this applies to you!

Do you do 2 or more people’s jobs? (Development/Marketing/Outreach/Volunteer Coordination/Website Designer/Website Manager/Graphic Designer/Speechwriter/In-Kind Donations/Event Coordinator/Public Relations/Grantwriting/Major Gifts/Planned Giving)?

Do you get more excited about your work than about family or anything else?

Do you eat precooked dinners from the freezer a lot?

Do you rarely get outside, except on the weekends?

Do you nap at work?

Do you come in earlier than 7am?

Do you worry that you’ll be seen as a slacker if you just work 40 hours a week?

Do you take work with you to bed? On weekends? On vacation?

Do you feel like you must justify stepping away from your desk?

Do you get irritated when people ask you to stop doing your work in order to do something else?

Do you take complete responsibility for the outcome of your work efforts?

Do you have a nagging feeling that it will NEVER get done?

Do you feel alone in your struggle in fundraising?

Are you worried about the future of your organization, so you try to work even harder, and stay later?

Is the future a constant worry for you even when things are going very well?

Turn away from that pile on your desk, put down that phone, read this post.

Last week, I bicycled through a graveyard. I feel it’s important to keep connected to graveyards, because that’s where you’re going to end up. So what are you doing with this one life? Ever thought about dying? What are you going to regret?

Working even when you’re home and thinking about work even on vacation means you don’t have time for your own career, or your own personal life. Which is a terrible robbery, when you think how little time we have here. Do you really want to say, “I died after I raised over $2 Million and my boss gave himself a raise” or “I died after I’d visited 10 countries, learned how to play the violin, and found and stayed with my true love”?

Isn’t it time we said enough? Do you have to be close to a graveyard, reading the gravestones, to see that we are all here for a very short time, and often, much shorter than we plan? What are you going to do about working too much?

We are 350 times more productive than a worker in the 1950s. And yet, we seem to find more to fill our time with, and more and more is asked of us.

How Workaholism Hurts Your Development Career

More and more nonprofit employees are working more and more hours. Some believe they must put in the extra time in order to hang onto their development jobs, while others think that spending lots of time in the office spells success for their nonprofit. Unfortunately, the former are probably right—nonprofit bosses are trying to get you to work EVEN HARDER in order to meet unrealistic fundraising expectations.

I know that many nonprofit fundraisers are encouraged to be workaholics. It gets so bad that you can only talk about the money you’re raising, the people you’re working with, the events you’re doing.

How can you get out of a workaholic rut?