Let's Talk Fundraising
Welcome to "Let's Talk Fundraising" with Keith Greer, CFRE! This podcast is your go-to resource for mastering the essentials of fundraising while discovering how innovative tools and technology can supercharge your efforts. Whether you're a new fundraiser looking to level up your skills or a seasoned professional seeking timely reminders and fresh insights, each episode is packed with practical advice, creative ideas, and inspiring stories.
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Let's Talk Fundraising
From Survival Mode to Steady Fundraising: How AI Brings Calm to Year-End
Year-end fundraising doesn’t have to feel like survival mode.
If you’ve ever spent December scrambling — rushing appeals, juggling Finance deadlines, and showing up exhausted for donors and family — you’re not alone. The truth is, survival mode isn’t a strategy. Steady rhythms are.
In this episode, I’ll share how to shift from frazzled to focused — and how AI can become the quiet assistant that keeps your year-end fundraising consistent, clear, and calm. You’ll hear practical steps you can start now to build a rhythm that carries you through December with confidence (without burning out).
✨ Ready to stop the chaos and bring steady rhythms into your year-end?
👉 The Fundraiser’s AI Starter Suite http://www.letstalkfundraising.com/startersuite
This course was built for fundraisers like you — not as a tech-heavy seminar, but as a supportive, simple path to using AI safely, humanly, and effectively. One short lesson is all it takes to feel the difference by Friday.
🔑 What You’ll Learn in This Episode:
✔️ Why survival mode fails (and how to break free from it)
✔️ The small, repeatable rhythms that bring calm to year-end fundraising
✔️ How AI can support you as a steady co-creator — not a replacement
✔️ Practical ways to save time, protect consistency, and find peace of mind
📌 Next Steps
✔️ Subscribe for weekly strategies on fundraising clarity, confidence, and AI support
✔️ Leave a 5-star rating & thoughtful review — it helps other fundraisers find these conversations
✔️ Start your AI journey here: The Fundraiser’s AI Starter Suite http://www.letstalkfundraising.com/startersuite
💡 Want to take the next small step?
→ Free Download: 12 Fundraising Prompts You'll Actually Use
→ Course: The Fundraiser's AI Starter Suite
Year end used to feel like a marathon. I didn't sign up for Direct mail, email, social posts, maybe even a radio spot, all running at once because we had to stand out in the noise. And just when I thought I was juggling it, finance would come sprinting over hair on fire, reminding me that every last number and expense had to be entered before January 7th or the books would be off. And somewhere in there I'd get roped into planning the holiday party too, because everybody who doesn't work in fundraising knows that all we do is plan and attend parties. And then January didn't bring relief. It brought tax receipts, the annual report and the next appeal to launch the work. Never let up, it just shifted shapes. Maybe you've lived that too the pileup of campaigns and deadlines that all matter and come all at once, the frazzled scramble to keep every piece consistent and clear. And when your brain and your bandwidth are stretched thin and here's what I've learned Year end doesn't have to feel like survival mode. There's a rhythm that can carry you through with steadiness, even in the busiest weeks. So let's talk fundraising. What I remember most isn't the mailing calendar or the appeal drafts. It's the exhaustion, the sense that, no matter how well I planned, the work kept multiplying. Every time I crossed something off the list, three new tasks popped up, and the truth is it wasn't just me. That's the reality. For most fundraisers.
Speaker 1:Year-end is when everything converges Campaigns that bring in the majority of your unrestricted dollars, leadership pressure to close the fiscal gap, finance deadlines, stewardship expectations, holiday distractions all hitting at the same time. And if you've ever lived like you were in survival mode from October through January, you're not alone. It's not because you're disorganized, it's not because you don't care. It's because the load is bigger than one person or even one team can carry without a really great structure. And here's the quiet truth I had to learn the hard way.
Speaker 1:Year end doesn't reward last minute heroics. It rewards steady rhythms. Think about it If you wait until December to write your appeals, you're so far behind. If you wait until the last minute to map your donor segments, you'll either skip segmentation or send something rushed. And if you only start thinking about stewardship once gifts start arriving, you'll drown in thank yous and feel guilty the whole time. Survival mode says I'll figure it out when I get there, but all that does is guarantee frantic weeks, late nights and work you don't necessarily feel all that proud of. Steady rhythm says I'll build the foundation now. So December feels calmer.
Speaker 1:And here's the thing Building that rhythm doesn't have to be grand or complicated. It's not about creating a 40-page year-end playbook. It's about simple, repeatable steps that give you clarity and consistency before the rush hits. And that might look something like blocking one hour a week in September to review donor lists and decide which segments are going to get what messages. Drafting a basic calendar that shows how mail and email and social are going to line up so you can see the flow before you're buried in it. And it might look like writing one evergreen stewardship message now so you're not scrambling to thank donors in the middle of your busiest week.
Speaker 1:Those small rhythms don't take away the pressure completely your end will always be full but they give you a foundation to stand on. They make the difference between frazzled and focused. And I'll be honest, I didn't always get this right. There were years when I told myself I'll pull it together in December and what that really meant was nights at the office, emails I wasn't proud of and a holiday season where my family got the exhausted version of me. But the years when I built rhythms earlier, everything felt different. The appeals were ready before the crunch, the stewardship flowed naturally. I still worked hard, but I wasn't brittle, I was steady, and that steadiness carried into January when the receipts and reports came due. So here's the principle I want you to hold on to Year-end success doesn't come from working harder in December. It comes from building rhythms now that carry you through the busiest season with steadiness and clarity. And that's what sets us up to talk about AI. Because, when used with care, ai doesn't add more noise to your year-end. It helps you hold the rhythm. It becomes the assistant that keeps your voice consistent, your messaging clear and your sanity intact.
Speaker 1:When I look back at those year-end seasons, what I remember most is the feeling of being pulled in every direction at once Appeals to finalize social posts, to schedule finance, panicking about deadlines, staff asking about the holiday party, and then January waiting with tax receipts, reports and the next appeal already looming. And for so long I thought the only option was to muscle through it. Stay later, work faster, push harder. But here's the truth. I wish I had known earlier. Survival mode is not a strategy, and that's where AI has become such a steady presence for me. Not as a magic solution, and not as a replacement for my judgment, but as a co-creator, a second set of eyes, an assistant that doesn't ever get tired, and let me tell you what that looks like.
Speaker 1:When I was preparing for this episode, I went back to those old memories of year-end prep and I thought about the sheer number of moving parts the direct mail, the emails, the social posts, the partner publications. Every piece had to be consistent, every piece had to sound like us and every piece had to build on the one before it. But then, as a solo fundraiser, I didn't have anyone to review everything with me. There was no communications team to double-check tone or strategy partner to say this message fits here, but not really there. It was me late nights reading drafts, hoping I hadn't contradicted myself somewhere along the way. Now I have ChatGPT and what that gives me is peace. I can drop in a set of drafts and simply ask do these feel consistent in tone? Does the messaging flow logically from one piece to the next? Did I accidentally change my call to action halfway through? And within minutes I have feedback Not perfect and certainly not final, but a clear reflection that helps me catch the little cracks before they widen. And that's rhythm Not rushing from task to task, hoping I'll remember everything, but returning to a steady process.
Speaker 1:That gives me confidence and clarity, and here's why that matters. Without rhythm, year-end prep becomes chaos. You jump from one piece to another, you second-guess yourself, you waste hours rewriting instead of refining and by the time December ends, you're so wrung out that you can't even celebrate what really went right. With rhythm, year-end prep becomes steadier. You know you have a co-creator helping you hold the through line. You know your messages align, you know you're not forgetting key steps and, instead of frazzled, you feel focused. That's the dual win I keep coming back to. The practical win, of course, is time saved, consistency protected and clarity gained. The emotional win is the peace of mind, the confidence and the steadiness. Both of these matter because this isn't just about efficiency. It's about how you feel during the busiest weeks of the year. And here's the key.
Speaker 1:Ai doesn't need to do everything. It doesn't need to write your whole appeal or run your whole campaign. What it does is hold the heavy starting points and keep watching over the consistency so you can do the human work that only you can do. It's like having an assistant who never gets tired of proofreading. An intern who never rolls their eyes when you ask them to check alignment. A strategy partner who always has time to talk through ideas. That's what it feels like when you use AI with care. And it doesn't stop with checking drafts.
Speaker 1:During year end, ai has become my strategy assistant. I'll say here are the channels I'm using mail, email and social. Here are the dates I need them to drop. Can you map out a sequence so that they build on each other? And within moments I have a draft calendar. Again, it's not perfect, it's not finished, but it's a rhythm I can refine instead of starting from scratch. Or I'll take the raw copy of an appeal and I'll ask something like can you suggest three subject lines that still sound like me? Or show me what this would look like condensed into a social post? Suddenly, instead of staring at a blank screen wondering how to adapt one piece of writing into three different formats, I have options in front of me, options I can edit and trust and put into play quickly. That's the kind of support that makes a real difference, because it frees me to focus on the donor experience instead of drowning in the logistic. And here's another place AI has steadied me, catching contradictions During year end.
Speaker 1:When I'm juggling so many pieces, it's easy to accidentally shift tone. Maybe the first email is hopeful and confident, but the second one drifts into panic because I wrote it at midnight. Or maybe one letter asks donors to join us, while the next says stand with us. And suddenly the call to action doesn't feel consistent. Ai helps me spot those things before they go out the door. I can ask do these sound aligned, or where might I be repeating myself? It's like holding a mirror up to my own writing, one that reflects back the patterns I can't see when I'm buried in the deadlines. That reflection gives me peace. It reminds me that I don't have to hold every thread in my head all at once. I can let the rhythm carry some of it for me. And that peace it's priceless, because year-end isn't just about hitting goals. It's about how we show up for our donors, our teams and our families in the middle of it all.
Speaker 1:Imagine what it would feel like this December to know that your appeals were drafted weeks in advance, to know your stewardship notes were already mapped, to know your messaging was consistent across mail and email and social, and to walk through the season not with panic but with presence. That's the steadiness that AI makes possible. And that's exactly why I built the Fundraiser's AI Starter Suite, not as a tech-heavy course, not as another thing for you to figure out, but as a set of rhythms designed to carry you, to help you face year-end with clarity instead of chaos, to give you the kind of peace that I had wished I had in those years when survival mode was all that I knew. It's not hype and it's not magic, it's just rhythm, and it's a rhythm that carries you through. And we've talked about how chaotic year-end can feel the appeals, the social posts, the deadlines from finance, the receipts waiting in January, and we've talked about how AI can help hold the rhythm waiting in January. And we've talked about how AI can help hold the rhythm, giving you clarity and consistency instead of chaos.
Speaker 1:But now I want to pause on the mindset piece, because this is where so many of us get stuck. The limiting belief I see most often, and the one I carried myself for years, sounds a little something like this I'll figure it out when I get there in December. Have you ever told yourself that? I know I have. It's usually came with a mixture of resignation and denial. I think, yes, the calendar is filling up, but I'll find the time. I'll power through when I need to. I always do.
Speaker 1:But here's what really happened when I leaned on that belief December would arrive and, instead of calmly executing a plan, I was scrambling. I was staying late, rushing drafts, second-guessing my decisions. My family got the brittle and exhausted version of me, and my donors got hurried communication instead of thoughtful stewardship, and my January was spent digging out of the hole that December left me in. And maybe you've lived some version of that too. The pressure mounts. You tell yourself you'll rally at the last minute and then you pay for it in exhaustion and guilt and relationships that feel frayed.
Speaker 1:And I want to say this clearly that belief the belief of I'll figure it out in December is a trap. It keeps you stuck in survival mode, and survival mode is not a strategy. So let's reframe that together. Instead of I'll figure it out when I get there. The new frame is I can build steady rhythms now that carry me through December with focus and calm. Do you feel the difference there? One leaves you bracing for the storm and the other leaves you anchored before the storm even arrives. And this reframe isn't about being perfect or planning every detail months in advance. It's about simple and steady rhythms that you can really trust. Here's what that looks like.
Speaker 1:Imagine opening your December calendar and seeing not a mountain of unknowns but a sequence of steps that you've already mapped. Your appeal drafts are finished, your donor segments are clear. Your stewardship messages are queued up. When finance drops their last-minute request, you have the bandwidth to respond calmly instead of frantically when the holiday party planning somehow lands in your lap. It's annoying, but it's not crushing, because the essentials are already handled. That's the power of rhythm. It gives you breathing space in the busiest season.
Speaker 1:And let me be honest here Building rhythm early doesn't mean you won't work hard. Year end is still full, the deadlines are real but it does mean you'll work from a place of steadiness instead of scarcity. You'll move through the seasons with confidence instead of constant reactivity, and that's what your donors need from you. They don't need perfect appeals or flawless emails. They need your presence. They need communication that feels thoughtful and consistent. They need to feel like they matter, not like they're one more task on your endless list, and that's what your family and your own soul need from you too. They need you steady, not wrung out, present, not distracted, able to enjoy the season instead of enduring it.
Speaker 1:Ai is one of the tools that makes that possible, because it removes the bottlenecks that used to keep me stuck in December. It gives me drafts to refine instead of blank pages to dread. It checks for consistency, so I don't waste hours second-guessing myself. It checks for consistency, so I don't waste hours second-guessing myself. It maps out flows so I can see the whole campaign clearly instead of piecing it together at midnight. And here's the mindset shift.
Speaker 1:Beneath all of this, Trusting rhythm doesn't make you less of a fundraiser. It makes you more present as a human being, because the truth is, donors don't remember whether every word was handcrafted at 2am. They remember how you made them feel and when you build rhythms early and you support wisely, what they feel is steadiness, presence and genuine gratitude. So let this sink in. You don't need to wait for December to figure it all out. You don't need to scramble through another year end and hope you survive. You can build a rhythm now that carries you through with focus and steadiness and peace, and that's the reframe I want you to hold on to From frazzled survival to focused rhythm, from scarcity to steadiness, from I'll figure it out later to. I can breathe now, because year-end doesn't have to be something you dread. It can be something you walk through with clarity and calm, and that shift starts not in December, but right here and right now. Here's what I want you to carry with you.
Speaker 1:Year end doesn't have to be survival mode. It doesn't have to be the season where you lose sleep, rush your words and hope you'll make it through. It can be steady, it can be focused, it can even be the time when you feel most grounded in your role, not because the work is smaller, but because you have rhythms that hold you. And the truth is those rhythms don't build themselves in December. They're built now, in the weeks leading up, one small step at a time, one rhythm layered on another until you can breathe again.
Speaker 1:For me, that's what AI has become Not a flashy trick, not a replacement for my judgment, but a rhythm I can return to when the calendar gets heavy, a co-creator that helps me stay clear and consistent when I'm carrying more than any one person really should, and the piece that gives me is worth more than any shortcut or late night push. If you're ready for that same steadiness, I would love to walk with you inside the Fundraiser's AI Starter Suite. It's not a tech seminar. It's a set of simple, safe rhythms designed for fundraisers who want to step into year end with confidence instead of chaos. One short lesson is all it takes to feel the shift by Friday. One short lesson is all it takes to feel the shift by Friday. You can find the link in the show notes or by visiting my website at letstalkfundraisingcom. Forward slash starter suite.
Speaker 1:And if this episode offered you any relief today, would you take a moment and leave a five-star rating and a thoughtful review? Those reviews aren't just numbers. They help this podcast reach other fundraisers who are carrying the same load you are. And if you haven't subscribed yet, that's another quick step that helps both of us. It means you never miss an episode and it signals to the platforms that these conversations are worth sharing with more fundraisers. So this week, as you look at your year-end calendar, I hope you'll hear this gentle reminder. You're not behind. You don't need to scramble your way through December. One steady rhythm at a time is enough. Next Monday, we're going to zoom out to the bigger picture. We'll talk about what it means to build a foundation that steadies you in every season of fundraising, not just the busiest ones. It's about creating the kind of clarity and confidence that you can carry all year long. Until then, take one small step that steadies you, let it give you back your breath. That's enough. See you soon, my friend.
