Our Chief Information Officer, Will Emmerson, was recently featured in Fundraising magazine with a practical guide on how fundraising teams can tackle the root causes of burnout. His argument is clear: much of the pressure fundraisers face isn't inevitable — it's the result of scattered systems, unclear processes, and too much time spent on admin that could be simplified or removed entirely.
Burnout in fundraising gets talked about a lot. But the conversation tends to focus on resilience, self-care, and wellbeing programs. Less attention is given to structural causes, like daily friction that slowly grinds your people down.
Fundraising teams sit at the intersection of services, finance, comms, trustees, and partners. Even straightforward tasks can involve coordinating across multiple people, systems and approval chains. When that coordination relies on email threads, ad hoc spreadsheets and a patchwork of disconnected tools, it's no wonder people feel overwhelmed.
This strain tends to show up in a handful of predictable pressure points: too much admin, too many systems, slow sign-off processes, and having to start from scratch far too often - rewriting bids, appeals and board papers that could easily build on what's come before.
Fragmented tech stacks are built slowly over time. No fundraising team wants to build a mish-mash of apps - a training platform here, a document store there, a new form tool for events, and a separate channel for volunteer onboarding. As they’re added, each one solves a specific problem, but together they create a fog of logins, duplicated information and unclear ownership.
As Will says, if you can name the person who always makes a particular process happen — the one who chases approvals, nudges people through onboarding, or pulls funder reports together at the last minute — you've found a pressure point. That person is holding something together that should be held together by a system.
And when that person goes on leave, or leaves entirely, things start to break.
One of the most useful ideas in Will's piece is the distinction between consistency and rigidity. Standardizing templates, approval routes and key processes shouldn’t turn your people into robots. It's about removing the avoidable decisions that drain energy. Meaning they can focus on the work that actually needs their judgement, creativity and empathy.
In practice, that means having shared templates for things like appeal briefs and donor updates, clear steps for brand, data protection and safeguarding approvals, one trusted place for policies, and simple forms that route information to the right people automatically.
When these basics are in place, new starters, part-time staff and volunteers can contribute sooner. And experienced fundraisers spend less time playing detective — trying to work out which version of a document is final, or who was supposed to sign something off — and more time building relationships with supporters.
There's growing interest across the charity sector in using AI to speed up repetitive tasks. This makes sense as funding and teams are squeezed. But without clear foundations — consistent processes, reliable information, and agreed rules about what's acceptable — AI adoption risks becoming another source of inconsistency and risk.
So, get the basics right first. Standardize your repeatable tasks. Consolidate your key documents into one place. Then, when you're ready, layer AI on top in a way that strengthens your operations rather than adding to the chaos.
Will's advice to fundraising leaders isn't to embark on a grand transformation programme. It's to start with the work itself — map where time and energy are going, identify the friction points, and fix them one at a time.
Pick one or two processes that cause disproportionate stress (approvals and funder reporting are good candidates), give them a clear route with named owners, and track whether things improve. A few visible wins go further than any big-bang overhaul.
Read Will's full article in Fundraising magazine.
If your fundraising team is spending more time on admin than on your mission, we should have a chat. Book a discovery call and we'll show you how a unified digital workplace can help you close the gaps.