Minimising Admin and Getting to the Donor
Most fundraisers aren’t under-performing because they don’t care about donors — they’re under-performing because they’re buried under admin that never should have landed on their desk in the first place.
If you want more time with donors, you have to be ruthless about how your work is structured.
1. Accept this reality first: admin will always expand to fill the void
If you do not actively contain it, administration grows. New reports. New fields. New “quick tasks” that quietly eat your week. The goal isn’t to eliminate admin — it is to cap it.
A good rule of thumb:
- Fundraisers should spend at least 60–70% of their time externally focused (donors, prospects, partners).
- If it is less than that, something upstream is broken.
2. Standardise everything that does not involve a donor
Every bespoke process is a time thief.
Lock down:
- Standard meeting notes (same template, every time)
- Standard proposal formats
- Standard stewardship plans by gift band
- Standard follow-up workflows
If every fundraiser is reinventing how they log a call, draft a brief, or prepare a proposal — you are wasting donor time without realising it.
Tradition matters here: the best fundraising shops have boring, predictable internal processes — so the external relationships can flourish.
3. Stop over-recording data “just in case”
This is a classic sin.
Ask one brutal question of every field, report, and dashboard:
Does this information directly help a fundraiser build or progress a donor relationship?
If not:
- Do not capture it
- Or push it to an admin or data role
- Or kill it entirely
Fundraisers are not data archivists. They are relationship managers.
4. Use your CRM as a memory, not a diary
Your CRM should:
- Remember preferences
- Track history
- Flag next actions
- Support continuity
It should not:
- Require essay-length call reports
- Duplicate what is already in emails
- Demand perfection before saving a record
Short, sharp, consistent notes beat beautifully written ones that never get entered.
5. Separate relationship work from system work
High-performing teams deliberately batch admin.
For example:
- Donor meetings in blocks (2–3 days a week)
- Admin and reporting in protected windows
- No CRM updates between meetings unless essential
Context switching kills momentum. Donors feel it — even if they cannot articulate why responses suddenly slow down.
6. Push support work to support roles (properly)
If fundraisers are:
- Booking meetings
- Formatting documents
- Chasing invoices
- Cleaning data
…you do not have a fundraiser problem — you have an operating model problem.
Even part-time admin support, properly trained, can unlock hours of donor contact per week. That return on investment is usually immediate.
7. Measure what actually matters
If you measure admin outputs, you will get admin behaviour.
Instead, track:
- Meaningful donor conversations
- Strategic touches (not just volume)
- Proposals advanced
- Stewardship delivered on time
- Donor movement between segments
What gets measured gets protected.
8. Re-anchor fundraisers to the donor — constantly
Good leaders do this relentlessly:
- In team meetings
- In one-on-ones
- In performance reviews
Not:
“Did you complete the report?”
But:
“Who did you speak to this week, and what did you learn about them?”
That question changes behaviour fast.
9. Remember why the old model worked
Traditionally, great fundraisers:
- Carried fewer donors
- Knew them deeply
- Spent more time listening than typing
- Were trusted to exercise judgement
Modern systems should support that model, not replace it with box-ticking theatre.
If you want fundraisers closer to donors
- Strip admin to its essentials
- Design systems around relationships, not compliance
- Protect donor time like it is sacred — because it is
Everything else is noise.
If you want, I can turn this into:
- a board-level paper
- a fundraiser productivity audit checklist
- or a “what to stop doing immediately” framework for teams
