Hello all, I believe I am in an unique situation that I wanted to find out if anyone can shed some light on. I am the gift processor for our non-profit organization. I process on the average of 200 to 350 gifts per month depending on the time of year. Most of these gifts are memorial gifts from our hospice program or special events related. I generate receipts for all gifts and for memorial gifts a issue a next-of-kind acknowledgement letter to the families (in which I look up each deceased to obtain the next of kind information and input that info in RE).

In addition to my gift processing responsibilities, I am also the Executive Assistant (actual title) for the Foundation President, a Director of Special Events, a Director of Major Gifts, and I also am a part-time onsite assistant to a VP of Ancilliary Services for the hospital. I inherited the gift processing duties when the gift processor position was eliminated.

As the gift processor, I am required to process these gifts within 72 hours. As an Executive Assistant, I am required to provide support to all the directors in addition to assisting with special events, Board minutes and other board responsibilities, updating and maintaining calendars, ensuring everything in the office gets runs smoothly, answer phones, etc.

Needless to say, I am struggling to keep up with all my responsibilities. I feel that for the most poart, I am keeping up with the gift processing, but struggling with the Executive Assistant role as to the expectactions are pretty high and I am told that gift processing is of the highest importance.

Is anyone else is in a similiar situation, in that they have dual roles, and if so, how do you balance all your responsibilities. Are there any suggestions that you would recommend that have worked for you? Any advice is appreciated! thanks!

I too have a role with multiple responsibilities, although I am thankfully doing them all in one office. Here's what I'm in charge of:

-Gift processing & acknowledgements (around 300 gifts/month)
-Reporting
-Database management
-Two major fundraising events (February and July), one donor recognition event
-Grants research
-Employee giving (annual campaign)
-some collateral production

It's definitely hard at times to balance all of these equally important duties. I've learned how to balance it all for the most part, but sometimes balance isn't a realistic expectation. Here's an article I've found helpful:

www.columbia.edu/itc/hs/pubhealth/isett/...ng%20your%20boss.pdf

You certainly can't change the amount of responsibility you have, but you can work with your bosses to make sure you're maximizing your abilities and performing the way you're expected to. If you've been told that gift processing is a priority, make that happen the way you need it to. Figure out how your other duties fit under gift processing, and ask what deadlines are. I've worked with plenty of individuals who think out loud, and it's easy to perceive their ideas as tasks that need to get done. You might believe that something is absolutely urgent, when in reality it is farther down on the priority list. Asking questions brings out the priority level. It does not hurt to ask for due dates on projects or tasks, and clarify any assumptions you are making regarding the tasks at hand.

Thank you for responding. I will review the article you posted this weekend.

I want to ask you opinion on something as I am fairly new to the industry. I know the standard process for sending acknowledgement letters is 3 days from receipt and I truly understand the importance of sending out acknowledgement letters to thank our donor. 95% of the gifts we receive are hospice gifts or from obituaries stating "in lieu of flowers, the family ask that you make a donation to ____ program"

Would it be a big deal if our gifts are acknowledged within 5 days instead of 3 days? Due to my workload, that would be a more realistic timeline and I am able to balance all my duties and prevent other important matters from "slipping through the cracks"?

Any thoughts?

How are you doing your acknowledgements? Maybe you can get some help from those who use automated methods if you are not already doing that. We do ours fairly quickly and easily using the acknowledgement merge file.

Sometimes you do the best you can with what you have. When I started here they were doing acknowledgements every 2 weeks. I immediately changed it to once a week then 3 times a week and now we do it daily.

As Nora says, be sure you are implementing the best automated features you can. Determine what is taking the longest (is it the gift entry or the acknowledgements?) and improve what you can.

I would still strive for 3 days if you can but if you have to allow yourself to slip do not punish yourself for it.

Unfortunately this position isn't so unique. Especially in small and growing organizations, gift processing is seen as just an administrative task that anyone can do. (And database administration is not recognized at all.)

It sounds like you are the person who needs to begin quantifying how long it takes, providing comparison to peer organizations, and figuring out how the duties can be reallocated. I know first-hand this can be painfully slow!

Step one: document exactly what you are doing and how long it takes, e.g. gift processing for 000 hours per day, processing receipts/acknowledgments/memorial notifications for 000 hours per day. Time blocking will be a big help if you aren't already doing that.

Step two: think about which parts of your work someone else could do, acknowledging that it may be slightly less efficient overall. For instance, maybe someone else could get a daily report of memorial gifts and take care of the notifications, or maybe someone could do all of the printing and mailing after you save things to a network drive.

Step three: ask for help when you need it. Use the 72-hour goal to your advantage: instead of pushing it back, tell your bosses that you want to meet it but will need help. And be ready to train someone. (If people there haven't read Donor-
Centered Fundraising, get a copy tomorrow.)

Step four: as Nora and Melissa suggested, find every opportunity for automation and pre-coding. Maybe you can tweak some of your online giving pages so that the gifts don't need any human touch to get acknowledged. If you do lots of direct mail, a barcode scanner might change your life. Doing some relationship coding for memorial notifications could save you tons of time. (One thing I've done is to have the donor to specify where they want the memorial notification to go, rather than having staff guess and find addresses.)

Best of luck!