It was 3:07pm when I realized I hadn’t eaten lunch, my water bottle was still full, and I had just toggled between writing donor email copy and troubleshooting a platform integration issue for the third time that day. I was also supposed to have reviewed data for a campaign report and followed up with a contractor. And, you know, stand up and walk at some point.

This is not a complaint. This is just… the shape of the job. At least, mine.

There’s No One Hat Called “Fundraising Strategy”

People outside our world sometimes think fundraising strategy is a clean, lofty thing. You know, sitting in a room with big whiteboards and bigger ideas. But inside the work, it’s never just strategy. It’s also writing the email, building the email, QA-ing the email, fixing the font size in the button, and then explaining why the email was needed in the first place.

Fundraising strategy is a mosaic of hats: strategist, writer, analyst, integrator, platform whisperer, client communicator, calendar negotiator. And sometimes snackless human. The mental gear-shifting alone can make your brain feel like it’s running diagnostics instead of doing real work.

Every Hat Has a Weight—and a Voice

Each hat demands something different from me:

• The strategist wants space to think, zoom out, see patterns.

• The writer wants quiet, clarity, and maybe an extra hour.

• The fixer wants to close loops, track bugs, solve things fast.

• The manager wants everyone moving and responding and aligned.

When you wear them all, you don’t just balance tasks—you balance identities. I have to shift emotional posture throughout the day, often in 10-minute windows. One meeting might be about vision and high-level direction. The next is about the spacing between columns in the mobile view.

There’s whiplash. There’s tension. And if I’m not careful, there’s resentment. Especially when the fire extinguisher gets called in — the urgent, unplanned issues that stop everything: the broken link, the typo in the live campaign, the client call that wasn’t on the calendar but can’t wait. And just like that, the whole day shape-shifts.

What I’ve Learned (the Hard Way)

You can’t always control the chaos. But you can name it.

I’ve learned to:

• Build real transition time into my day, even if it’s just a walk around the block or a few deep breaths in front of the window.

• Let something be good enough when perfection is a disguised delay.

• Use small rituals to get out of my own head (a checklist, a post-it, a 3-minute music break).

• Protect blank space like it’s a client meeting. Because it kind of is.

I’ve also learned that when I’m the bottleneck, clarity and humility go a long way. If I can tell the team or client where I’m stuck and why, that’s better than silence and guilt.

And here’s a secret: the hats will still be there when I return. But I come back better when I give myself just a little margin.

What I Tell Myself When the Hats Hit the Floor

Because some days, they do.

• Done is kinder than perfect.

• A delayed response is not a moral failure.

• I’m allowed to stop for lunch.

• Nobody dies if the email sends at 2:03 instead of 2:00.

• Donors don’t notice the padding issue in Outlook.

• I can lead well even when I’m tired.

• Drinking water counts as progress.

These aren’t excuses. They’re perspective.

To the One Wearing Them All

You’re not disorganized. You’re just finite. You’re just human.

You’re doing strategy and execution, client work and team care, platform fixes and calendar magic. That’s not failure. That’s faithfulness. That’s leadership.

You are not behind. You are in the middle.

Take a breath. Take a sip. And maybe today, take off just one hat.

And if all you did was move one project forward and answer that one email you were dreading? That’s something. That’s enough. You’re doing just fine.