Fundraiser stress and burnout
Fundraising is a stressful job. It can often be so stressful that fundraiser are get burned out doing it to the extent that they leave their jobs, leave the fundraising profession or, in a few cases, experience breakdown.
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Irish fundraiser Michelle Reynolds has research the factors that cause stress to fundraisers and lead to burn out as part of a Master’s degree in integrative counselling and psychotherapy with Turning Point and University College Cork. Rogare is delighted to provide Michelle with a platform to publish her findings through our new paper – Caring too much: The burnout dilemmas faced by fundraisers and the emotional toll of a fundraising career.
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Michelle identifies four key drivers of stress and burnout among fundraisers:
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Fundraisers’ inherent empathy (a trait that is often identified as necessary for successful fundraising) opens the door to emotional strain.
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Fundraisers regularly put others’ interests before their own, not just donors and beneficiaries, but also colleagues and their charity
The paper also contains an honest case study written by Colin Skehan – participant to Michelle’s study – detailing his own breakdown and how he came through it.
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Rogare’s chair Damian Chapman uses the paper to call on the nonprofit sector to put in place the basic protections for fundraisers that exist in most other professions.
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The ideas presented in this paper are all Michelle’s and Rogare makes no claim to this work – we felt it was so important that it needed to be read by as wide an audience as possible. Now that the report is published, we hope to further engage the fundraising profession in finding solutions to the burnout crisis.
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Fundraisers feel under constant pressure to achieve more for less and don’t feel they have room to say ‘no’.
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There’s a sense that fundraisers can – and should – be able to ‘deliver the impossible’; yet they simultaneously experience isolation and invisibility, often feel unseen, unheard and unsupported at and by their organisations.
More information
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Download Caring too much: The burnout dilemmas faced by fundraisers and the emotional toll of a fundraising career, optimised for reading on a desktop
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Download Caring too much: The burnout dilemmas faced by fundraisers and the emotional toll of a fundraising career, optimised for reading on a tablet
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Download Caring too much: The burnout dilemmas faced by fundraisers and the emotional toll of a fundraising career, optimised for printing (block colour removed)
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Read the Rogare press release announcing the paper’s publication
