Let's Talk Fundraising

A More Supportive Goal Strategy

• Keith Greer, CFRE

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Free Gift 🎁 Big Goals Worksheet

If goal setting feels like a test you’re always failing, this conversation offers a calmer path. We pull apart the myths that keep fundraisers stuck—outcome-only targets, motivation as strategy, and the idea that discipline alone drives results—and replace them with a research-backed approach that actually holds the messiness of real work. You’ll hear how to separate what you want to change from what you can control, design if-then responses for predictable obstacles, and build early feedback so you can see momentum long before revenue lands.

We walk through the Big Goal worksheet, a thinking scaffold that slows the jump from ambition to action just enough to think clearly without losing steam. It starts with a single outcome for direction, then anchors purpose across mission, role, and identity so your goals compete with the urgent. From there, you’ll identify a few high-impact behaviors within your control, name realistic roadblocks based on your history, and pair each with specific if-then plans. You’ll design progress signals to catch movement early, set tripwires to trigger small course corrections, and add recognition practices that keep energy alive in long fundraising cycles.

To make the process less lonely, we introduce the Big Goal AI coach. It won’t hand you answers or a checklist; it asks sharper questions, slows you when you’re vague, and nudges you to narrow focus when ambition sprawls. Used with the worksheet, it keeps your thinking tethered to real decisions and support systems—not wishful scoreboards. By the end, you’ll have a steadier relationship with goals that helps you aim higher without burning out, and a practical way to adjust without shame when reality shifts.

Grab the free Big Goal worksheets and get limited-time access to the AI coach at letstalkfundraising.com/resources. If this helped you rethink your year, subscribe, leave a review, and share it with a colleague who could use lighter, stronger goals.

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Keith Greer:

Happy New Year's, my friends. There's a moment that happens to me almost every year about this time. I sit down to set my goals for the year ahead, and I actually feel excited. I like thinking big. I have ambition, and there are things that I want to build, improve, and change. And then the overwhelm kicks in. Because I know I'm supposed to have smart goals, specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound. I know the rules. I've taught the rules, but there's just so much. So many things I want to accomplish, so many priorities pulling on my attention. And the reality of my work, especially in fundraising, is rarely clean or linear. Everything is interconnected. Revenue is tied to relationships. Relationships are tied to trust. Trust is tied to time and energy and capacity. So when someone says, just pick three to five goals for the year, my brain immediately says, okay, but which three? And what about everything else? Often the situation I'm facing feels messy, layered, still evolving. Teasing out one clear, tangible goal from all of that complication can feel almost burdensome. Like the very act of goal setting is adding work instead of creating clarity. And that's usually the point where I stall out and I think, where do I even begin? This year, instead of forcing myself to push through that feeling, I tried something different. I started having longer, more honest conversations about what I actually wanted to change, what mattered most right now, and what I could realistically focus on without abandoning my bigger vision. Those conversations, paired with a deep dive into the research on how goals actually work, helped me realize something important. Most of us don't struggle with goal setting because we lack discipline or ambition. We struggle because we're trying to force clarity too early without a structure that can hold complexity. So I built something to help me sort through all of that, a way to slow down just enough to think clearly without losing momentum. And in today's episode, I want to walk you through that way of thinking about goals for the year ahead, especially if you're a fundraiser or nonprofit leader who has a lot that you care about and isn't sure where to start. So let's talk fundraising. One of the things that surprised me when I started digging into the research on goal settings is this. Most people don't fail to achieve their goals because they don't care enough. They fail because the way goals are usually set asks too much of human willpower and not nearly enough of human reality. A lot of goal setting focuses almost entirely on outcomes. Raise this much money, hit this number, launch this initiative. And outcomes matter. I'm not saying that they don't, but research is very clear on this. Outcomes alone don't change behavior. What changes behavior are the processes that sit underneath those outcomes. And in fundraising, that gap between outcome and process is where things often fall apart. Think about it. You can set a revenue goal for the year, but you can't control when a donor says yes. You can commit to a campaign, but you can't force enthusiasm or urgency on the other side. What you can control are the behaviors, how often you're in real conversations with donors, how consistently you're following up, whether you're doing proactive relationship work or just reacting to what's urgent. Another thing the research highlights is that goals tend to fail when they rely on motivation instead of preparation. Most goal setting assumes this invisible rule. I'll just try harder. But motivation is not a reliable strategy, especially in long, emotionally complex work like fundraising. Research shows that people are far more likely to follow through when they plan in advance for obstacles. Not if obstacles happen, but when they happen. Because they always do. Energy dips, rejection happens, internal priority shift, life intervenes. And when there's no plan for that moment, the goal quietly starts to drift. Another major issue is feedback or the lack of it. In fundraising, results lag effort. You can do everything right in January and not see a dollar until June or even beyond. When the only signal you're watching is revenue, you adjust too late, or you assume nothing is working and abandon the plan entirely. The research is clear here too. People stay engaged when they can see signs of early progress, leading indicators, signals that tell you this is moving in the right direction, even before the final outcome shows up. And finally, there's identity. Goals that aren't connected to who you are or who you're becoming in your role don't last. If a goal doesn't reinforce how you want to lead, how you want to show up, or what kind of organization you're trying to build, it will always lose to the urgent thing in front of you. When you put all of this together, a different picture of goal setting starts to emerge. Not goals as pressure, not goals as a test of discipline, but goals as a support system, a way to focus effort, anticipate reality, and notice sooner when something needs to change. And once I saw that, it became clear why so many well-intentioned goals quietly fall apart by March and why I needed a different structure this year. And that's where the big goal worksheet comes in. Once I started looking at the research more closely, something really important clicked for me. The problem wasn't that I was bad at goal setting, and it wasn't that I wasn't committed enough. The problem was that most goal setting frameworks treat goals like a scoreboard, something you check at the end of the year to see whether you passed or failed. But the research paints a very different picture. Effective goals don't sit at the end of the work, they sit inside the work. They're not there to judge you, they're there to guide you, especially when things get messy. And that matters because fundraising is inherently messy. You can do everything right and still hear no. You can put in weeks of effort before you see any external validation. You can be deeply committed to the mission and still feel exhausted or stuck. When goals are framed as pressure, as something you either hit or you don't, they tend to create two predictable reactions. Either we overcontrol, we set too many goals too aggressively, and quietly burn ourselves out trying to keep all the plates spinning. Or we disengage, we set goals with good intentions, then stop looking at them because they make us feel behind. Neither of those responses actually leads to better results. The research suggests something much steadier. Goals work best when they act like support rails, structures that help you stay oriented, notice earlier when something's off, and adjust without shame. That's a very different relationship with goal setting. Instead of asking, did I hit it or not? The question becomes, is this still helping me focus my energy in the right place? That shift was huge for me. It allowed me to stop treating goals like a test and start treating them like a tool. And once I had that lens, it became clear that I needed a way to slow the goal setting process down just enough to think clearly without losing momentum or getting lost in overthinking. That's what led to the big goal worksheet, not as a form to fill out, but as a thinking scaffold, something that could hold complexity instead of pretending it doesn't exist. At its core, the worksheet is built around a simple idea from the research. Clarity doesn't come from trying to answer everything at once. It comes from asking the right questions in the right order. You don't start by asking, what should I do this year? You start by asking, what actually needs to change? You don't jump straight to tactics. You first get clear on why this goal matters, to the mission, to your role, and to the kind of leader that you're trying to be. And instead of pretending obstacles won't show up, you plan for them, not with optimism, but with honesty. One of the most helpful shifts for me was separating outcomes from behaviors. The outcome is what you're aiming for, but the behaviors are what you actually control. In fundraising, that distinction is everything. You may not be able to control when a donor makes a gift, but you can control whether you're consistently in conversation, whether you're following up, whether you're doing proactive relationship work or just reacting to urgency. The worksheet forces that clarity, and not in a punitive way, but in a really grounding way. It also builds in something most goal setting completely ignores early feedback. Instead of waiting months to see if a dollar amount shows up, you define progress signals, the small, observable signs that tell you whether your effort is translating into momentum. That way, you can adjust sooner, without drama, without self-judgment. And then there's the piece that might be my favorite: tripwires. Tripwires are early warning signs. They answer the question: what would tell me that this goal is starting to drift? And what will I do when that happens? Not if it happens, when? Because drift isn't failure, it's information. And finally, the worksheet asks you to think about recognition, not just at the finish line, but along the way, because effort deserves to be acknowledged. Progress deserves to be seen, especially in work where results lag far behind the labor. All of this is rooted in one central belief that the research supports over and over again. People don't follow through because they're pushed harder. They follow through because they can see themselves in the goal and because the system supports them when motivation inevitably dips. Once I started using this approach myself, goal setting stopped feeling like a burden I had to push through. It became a way to focus my ambition without shrinking it. Once I had this shift, I realized I didn't need a more aggressive goal. I needed a better way to think about my goals, one that could hold ambition and reality at the same time. And that's what led me to create the big goal worksheet. It's a simple tool, but it's built to do something most goal setting never does. Support you while the work is actually happening. So let's talk about the big goal worksheet itself, not as a form to complete, but as a way of thinking. The worksheet exists for one simple reason. Most goal setting tries to force clarity too fast. It asks you to jump straight from here's everything I care about to here are my goals for the year. And for complex work like fundraising, that jump is just too big. The big goal worksheet slows that jump down just enough to help you think clearly without losing momentum. It starts with the goal itself, not a list of tasks, not a strategy, but a clear outcome you're aiming for, something you could point to at the end of the year and say, this changed. That matters because outcomes give direction. They help you decide what to say yes to and what to let go of. But the worksheet doesn't stop there because outcomes alone don't sustain effort. The next question it asks is about purpose and meaning. Why this goal? Why now? And this isn't about writing something inspirational. It's about identifying what actually makes this goal worth your energy, especially on days when motivation is low. In fundraising, purpose often lives at multiple levels at once. The mission, your role, and the kind of leader you're becoming. When those aren't aligned, goals feel heavy. When they are, goals create focus. From there, the worksheet moves into ownership. And this is one of the most important and most overlooked parts of goal setting. Ownership asks, if this goal is successful, how does it change you, your leadership, or the organization? Not just what gets accomplished, but who you become in the process. For individual contributors, this might be about confidence, clarity, or consistency. For team leaders, it might be about modeling behavior, setting culture, or making better decisions about where the team's energy goes. This section anchors the goal in identity, not just in metrics. And research shows that goals tied to identity are far more likely to hold over time. Then that worksheet turns toward actions. This is where a lot of goal setting either gets overwhelming or vague. Instead of asking for a long list of tasks, the worksheet asks you to identify a small number of behaviors that are fully within your control. Not everything you could do, just the actions that actually drive progress if done consistently. In fundraising, this distinction is critical. You don't control donor decisions. You don't control timing. You don't control budgets, but you do control whether you're having real conversations, whether you're following up, whether you're being proactive instead of reactive. By separating outcomes from actions, the worksheet grounds your ambition in reality. Next, the worksheet asks you to anticipate obstacles. This is where it intentionally breaks from traditional goal setting. Instead of assuming best case scenarios, it asks you to be honest. What is most likely to get in the way, and not hypothetically, based on your actual experience? It might be your own personal avoidance, internal demands within the company, emotional fatigue, competing priorities, or the slow grind of a long fundraising cycle with a little feedback along the way. Naming obstacles isn't pessimism, it's preparation. And that's why the next section matters so much, your planned response. For each obstacle, the work she asks you to decide in advance how you'll respond. This is where if then planning comes in. If this happens, then I will do this. The power here is that you're not making decisions in the moment when your energy is low or emotions are high. You're deciding ahead of time from a place of clarity. Then the worksheet turns to progress signals. And this is one of the most important sections for fundraising work. Because results lag effort, the worksheet asks you to define how you'll know things are working before the final outcome is visible. What would tell you a few weeks in that you're moving in the right direction? These signals are like early feedback. They help you adjust sooner rather than waiting until it's too late. Closely related to that are the tripwires. And tripwires are early warning signs. They answer the question: what would tell me that progress is stalling or drifting? And what will that trigger me to do? Tripwires normalize adjustment. They assume that drift will happen and treat it as information, not as failure. And finally, the work she asks you to think about recognition, not just at the end, along the way. This is about acknowledging effort and progress, especially in work where outcomes are delayed. Recognition reinforces behavior. It helps sustain energy, and it reminds you and your team that the work itself matters. When you put all of this together, the big goal worksheet becomes more than a planning tool. It becomes a way to hold complexity, focus your ambition, and create a steadier relationship with your goals. You're not trying to predict the future, you're designing support for the work as it unfolds. And once I had that structure in place, I realized something else. The hardest part for many people isn't the worksheet itself. It's having someone or something to help you think through it honestly. And that's where this next layer comes in. Once I had the big goal worksheet, something else became clear pretty quickly. The worksheet itself works, but it also asks you to slow down, reflect honestly, and sit with questions that don't always have immediate answers. And for a lot of people, especially busy fundraisers and nonprofit leaders, that's the hardest part. Not because they aren't thoughtful, but because you're usually doing this kind of thinking alone in the margins of your already full days. What I found helpful for myself was having a thinking partner, someone or rather, something that could ask good questions, notice when I was being vague or overly ambitious, and gently push me to be clearer before moving on. That's what led me to build the big goal AI coach. At its core, the big goal coach isn't there to tell you what your goals should be. It doesn't make decisions for you, and it doesn't hand you a list of best practices, and it doesn't rush you toward an answer. Instead, it's designed to do something much simpler and much harder. It helps you think. The coach is trained on evidence-based research about how goals actually work. Things like the difference between outcomes and behaviors, why planning for obstacles matters, and how identity and follow-through are connected. But more importantly, it's trained to ask questions in a very particular way. It starts by helping you get oriented, especially if things feel messy or overwhelming. It asks you to clarify what really needs to change right now instead of trying to solve everything at once. As you move through the big goal worksheet, the coach acts like a steady guide. If your goal is vague, it will slow you down and ask you to be more specific. If your ambition is working against you, if you're trying to do too much at once, it will gently surface that and invite you to narrow your focus. If you're avoiding something uncomfortable, and who doesn't, it will notice the pattern and ask about it, but it won't fill in the worksheet for you. You still decide what feels true, you still choose what matters, and you still own the final version of the goal. The coach's role is to make sure you're not skipping the hard thinking or rushing past places where clarity actually forms. One of the things I appreciate most about using it myself is that it doesn't treat uncertainty as a problem. If you don't know what your goals should be yet, that's okay. If something feels off in your fundraising work, but you can't quite name it, that's okay too. The coach is built to start there. It asks questions that help you untangle what's underneath the overwhelm so that when you do land on a goal, it's grounded and it's durable. And because it's paired directly with the big goal worksheet, everything stays connected. You're not having abstract conversations about productivity. You're using those conversations to build something concrete, a goal and a plan that can. Actually support you throughout the year. I see the big goal coach as an extension of the worksheet, not a replacement for your judgment and not a shortcut around the work, but a way to make the thinking process feel less lonely and more doable. And because I know that trying something new always comes with a bit of hesitation, I wanted to make it easy for you to explore. So here is my gift to you. I want to pause here and make this really simple. If what I've been describing feels helpful, if you're craving a calmer, more grounded way to think about your goals for the year ahead, I want you to be able to try this without pressure. So I'm giving you two things. First, you can down the big goal worksheets for free. These are the same worksheets I've been talking about, the ones designed to help you slow down just enough to think clearly without getting stuck or overwhelmed. You can use them on your own, you can use them with your team, you can print them out or work through them digitally. They're there for you anytime. You'll find the link in the show notes, or you can always visit my website at let's talkfundraising.com forward slash resources to download the big goal worksheets directly. Second, and this is something I'm offering just for a short window, for the rest of January 2026, anyone who signs up to get the worksheets will also get free access to the Big Goal AI coach. That means you can actually walk through this process with support. You can bring the coach a messy idea and say, I don't know what my goal should be yet. Help me think through this. You can use it to pressure test a draft goal. You can use it to notice where you might be trying to do too much. You can use it to think through obstacles before they derail you. There's no obligation, no commitment required. And I'm offering this because I want you to experience what it feels like to have structure that supports you rather than another system that demands more from you. Down the road, the big goal coach may become something I put behind a paywall. But right now, I want to make it easy for you to explore. Try it. See how it feels. Notice whether it helps you think more clearly and move forward with more confidence. And if all you do is download the worksheet and spend 20 quiet minutes with it, that's a win. You don't need to have the perfect goal today. You don't need to have the whole year mapped out. You just need a place to begin that doesn't make you feel behind before you've even started. So again, you can click the link in the show notes to get access to both the worksheets and the big goal coach, or you can visit letstalkfundraising.com forward slash resources at any time to download the big goal worksheets. My hope is that these tools give you a steadier way to hold your ambition without shrinking it, and that as you step into the year ahead, your goals feel less like pressure and more like support. Before we wrap up, I want to take a moment to say this clearly. If goal setting has ever felt overwhelming, discouraging, or heavier than it should be for you, that's not a personal failure. It's usually a signal that you've been trying to hold a lot of responsibility, a ton of ambition, and a whole lot of care without a structure that truly supports you. The work you do as a fundraiser and a nonprofit leader is not simple. It's relational, it's emotional. It unfolds over long periods of time, often without immediate feedback. And yet, you're still expected to be strategic, focused, and forward-looking. That's a lot to carry. So if you're choosing to pause, reflect, and think intentionally about your goals for the year ahead, I want you to know this. That choice alone already says something good about you. It says you care about doing this work well. It says you're willing to be thoughtful, not just busy. And it says you're open to building a relationship with goals that's steadier and kinder than what you may have experienced before. If you decide to download the big goal worksheets and work through them, I hope you give yourself permission to go slowly. You don't need to have the perfect goals right away. You don't need to answer every question in one sitting. Even noticing where things feel unclear or messy, it's a part of the process. And if you use the big goal coach as you work through the worksheet, my hope is that it feels like a steady thinking partner, one that helps you ask better questions, notice patterns, and resist the urge to rush past the place where clarity is still forming. This isn't about getting it right. It's about building goals that can actually hold you through your year ahead. If this episode resonated with you, I'd really encourage you to subscribe to the podcast. Each week, these conversations are meant to support you, not just as a professional, but as a human doing complex and meaningful work. And if you know someone, a colleague, a teammate, a friend in the field who feels stuck, overwhelmed, or unsure where to focus right now, consider sharing this episode with them. Sometimes the most generous thing we can do is say, you're not alone in this, and here's something that helped me think differently. You'll find the link in the show notes to download the Big Goal worksheets and get access to the Big Goal Coach for the rest of January. Or you can visit Let's TalkFundraising.com forward slash resources. Anytime to download the worksheets. No pressure, no urgency, just an invitation to try something that might make the year ahead feel a little steadier. Thank you for spending this time with me today. Thank you for the care, integrity, and persistence you bring to your work, even when it's hard. And thank you for being willing to slow down long enough to choose your goals with intention. I'm really glad you're here. Happy New Year, my friend. I'll see you next time.

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Keith Greer, CFRE

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