Rhea Wong (0:00)

Hey you, it's Rhea Wong. If you're listening to Nonprofit Load On, I'm pretty sure that you'd love my weekly newsletter. Every Tuesday morning, you get updates on the newest podcast episodes, and then interspersed, we have fun special invitations for newsletter subscribers only and fundraising inspo because I know what it feels like to be in the trenches alone. On top of that, you get cute dog photos. Best of all, it is free. So what are you waiting for? Head over to riawong.com now to sign up. Welcome to Nonprofit Lowdown. I'm your host, Rhea Wong. Hey Nonprofit Lowdown listeners, Rhea Wong with you once again with Nonprofit Lowdown. Today I wanted to start off the podcast with a story that I have been thinking about. It's a bit of a parable. So it goes like this. Once upon a time there was a farmer whose horse ran away, and that evening all of his neighbors gathered around him and said, oh, what bad fortune. This is terrible. And the farmer answered, maybe. Then the next day the horse came back, leading seven wild horses with it, and in the evening he was able to corral them and had eight horses. And all the neighbors gathered around said, oh, so lucky, what good fortune you've had. And the farmer replied, maybe. The next day his son tried to break one of the horses and fell off and broke his leg. Again, the neighbors gathered around and said, oh, this is terrible news. Is terrible luck. And the farmer replied, maybe. The day after a conscription officer came through the village looking for young men to conscript for the war and they skipped over the Manson because his leg was broken. And again the neighbors gathered around and said, what good luck this is. And the farmer replied, maybe share this story with you. I've been thinking about this story for a while because I think it is in our human nature to assign a judgment. And I don't know about y'all, I tend to catastrophize. It's a feature, not a bug, of our human brain. And so today I wanted to talk about the nature of luck and the nature of maintaining our equanimity in the face of hard times. Because the truth is, you don't know if it's good or bad. You don't know if it's right or wrong. You don't know what happens in the end. I often think about Krishnamurti, who is an Indian spiritual teacher, and he said that the secret to his serenity was that he doesn't mind what happens. Which, let's be clear, I'm not quite there yet as a spiritual person, but I think that there's something here about knowing that you are going to be okay, knowing that you're going to be calm in the face of difficulty, in the face of crisis. And when we stop racing to judgment, when we stop being a Chicken Little and thinking that the sky is falling all the time, I think that's when we reclaim our brains, we reclaim our power, we reclaim our nervous system. Overreacting to everything and look, easier said than done. I know that I have a tendency to catastrophize as well, but I think we're living in a moment where it feels like crisis. But we've been here before, we will be here again. And I think the key here, the thing that I want to share with you today, is what would it be like for us to ask instead of what could go wrong, what could go right? I'll give you a quick example. When Covid hit and every nonprofit out here was wringing their hand and thinking that the sky was falling, and it actually turned out to be a boom year for many nonprofits. We call it now, in retrospect, the COVID bump. Who could have imagined that would be the consequence of what was a global pandemic? That's an opportunity when many organizations were able to raise more money than they ever had, were able to expand their offerings, were able to bring on the capacity that they needed. That was not predictable. Let's go back 2008, when the stock market crash happened. Everyone was wringing their hands. This is the end of the civil. The doom and gloom, as far as we know it. Frankly, that was a boom year for me, too. That's when a lot of my funders stepped in and stepped up and stepped into the breach. It is not that I'm here to undermine or belittle the emotional experience of what a lot of us are going through. In the face of difficulty, in the face of fear that our loved ones might be deported, in the face of protecting trans rights, in the face of protecting reproductive rights. It is a very hard time for many folks, and I think when we are able to step forward with a sense of calm and equanimity and fierceness in belief in what we believe and who we want to protect, but at the same time, not allowing the media and all of these politicians to dictate our emotional state. Because when someone else dictates your emotional state, you give them the power. I often think about. I do meditation every morning. One of the meditations I did recently was this idea of clouds. Right? Your mind is actually the sky not the clouds. And so the trick here, and again, easier said than done, is when you are an observer of the reaction, when you are an observer of what is happening, but you are not reacting to it, you are being discerning, you are being intelligent about the things that you are reacting to. Because truthfully, it is crazy making out here. And if we are not so deeply grounded in ourselves and conscientious and conscious about the things that we allow into our visual and mental and emotional fields, we. We are very quickly going to burn. So I want to share a little bit of a story with you. So I was recently talking to a nonprofit leader who, like a lot of us out here at work, was panicked about potential federal grant cuts. And she kept saying, what if we lose this funding? What if we have to shut down programs? What if we have to lay off people? And I get it, the fear is absolutely real. But I asked her, what if instead of focusing on what you might lose, you focus on what new opportunities might open up? She sat with that for a moment, and then she said, I guess we'd have to get serious about major gifts and maybe we'd finally build that corporate partnership we've been talking about for years. Boom. That's it. When you shift your mindset from fear to possibility, you start seeing solutions instead of roadblocks. Because our brains, as I mentioned before, our brains are wired for negativity bias. It's literally a survival mechanism. Think about it. When we were cave people and we saw something scary in a cave, now our brains are trying to protect us, our always. So it was always safer to assume that maybe it was a saber toothed tiger in the cave than it was a bunny rabbit. Our brains have been evolving millions of years and the current situation that we're in has moved very quickly. The hardwire of our not yet caught up with the reality of living in 2025. At some point, maybe we'll have chips installed in our brains. But until that point, we have to mitigate some of the downside of what might be keeping us in fear. Even though it has been a very handy survival mechanism for millions and millions of years. When you're in survival mode, it doesn't serve you in leadership and it keeps you reactive instead of proactive. The best leaders don't just brace for impact. They pivot, innovate, and stay open to new possibilities. So I would invite you to consider asking yourself, what opportunities am I not seeing because I'm so focused on fear? What doors could open if I choose to step into an abundance mindset. I want to talk about this idea of what could go right. We spend so much time and mental energy thinking about all of the things that could go wrong. I'm guilty of this too. I don't want to pretend I have mastered this, but I encourage us, I invite us, and I invite myself to consider what could go right. What could go right if I don't spend a fraction of the time thinking about what could go right compared with the amount of time I spend thinking about calamity. So let's talk about what happens when things could go right. Crisis equals clarity. I think the thing that we've seen, and I don't think it's actually a mistake when we see some of the biggest companies in the world. They are often created during times of downturn, economic recession, crisis, because in tough times, the fluff falls away. You're supposed to focus on what actually moves the needle. And so I would invite you to use this moment to get clear what's working, what's draining resources, what is essential. I want to talk to you about scarcity versus abundance. I've talked about this ad nauseam, but when we leave from scarcity, that is when the lizard part of the brain, the part of the brain that is responsible for fight, flight or freeze, tells us a story about there's not enough, we're doomed. And it actually gets us into binary black and white thinking. We shut ourselves off from possibilities. So when we lead from abundance, we start seeing creative solutions. Maybe it's a deepening of donor relationships, it's creating a new revenue stream, or it's restructuring for sustainability. Last week I provided some resources from Byron Katie about helping to get your brain out of the reactive system scared mindset into the executive function of when we're thinking creatively, expansively and generatively. I want to talk about leaders who take action. So the leaders who act, adapt and innovate come out stronger. And the ones who freeze in fear, they fall behind. Money loves speed. And I know that there can be a tendency when we're in uncertainty to freeze up and not know what to do or how to move forward. But you build confidence in the action. I want to pause here and talk a little bit about the nature of luck. So a lot of us, I'm sure, have been the recipients of luck in our lives. And I want to talk about three different kinds of luck. There's blind luck, and that is you find $20 in the street. That's blind luck, right? It's just some of us, some are Luckier than others. But this is not luck that you can plan for. This is not luck that you can strategize for. It's is just you're lucky. A lot of times I think nonprofit leaders feel like some of the gifts that they've received have just been blind luck. The second kind of luck is luck by action. And so what that means is that you are literally doing so many things that you increase the surface area of the luck, right? So Instead of sending 10 emails, you're sending 50, maybe 100. Instead of doing one ask or getting in front of one donor, you're doing 20 or 50 or 100. Instead of adding 10 people to your email list, maybe you're adding a hundred, right? So the activity, the action, increases the surface area of your luck. And then finally, I wanna talk about luck by design. And this is the kind of luck that when it happens, it feels lucky. But in actual fact, it took a lot of planning to get there. And that's the kind of luck where you are preparing the mind to be sensitive to opportunities that others miss. It's about becoming the best at what you do, refining and then spotting opportunity. When it comes knocking at your door, luck becomes your destiny. And I think we now have an opportunity for all of us to calm down and think about becoming lucky by design. And then finally, I wanted to share that momentum is built, not found. And so waiting for things to get better is not a strategy. Small steps create big momentum. Start by getting lucky by action. The key is to start somewhere. And so what I want to offer today is some practical steps for you to stay proactive in this moment. That feels a little bit scary. One, we talked about this last week, audit your finances. So know exactly where you stand, what revenue streams are steady, where do you need to cut back or shift priorities. Data will give you the power. And by the way, if you audit and you see that your top donors, say your top 10% of donors are coming from a single source, that is really good information because then you just need to double down on that source, double down on what's working and ignore the rest. Talk to your donors. Don't assume people will stop giving. Many are still deeply committed to your cause. So. So engage them in conversations, share your vision and invite them to be part of the solution. 3. Get creative with funding. In fact, this past weekend I participated in this three day conference and this guy was talking about creative financing terms. It blew my mind. But when we think about creative financing, we can think about things like, are there ways that we can save on cash flow by renegotiating the terms of payment for some of our vendors. What new revenue streams are there? Are there earned income opportunities? Maybe there are some strategic partnerships. Now is the time to think outside of the box. 4. Invest in leadership and training. You can actually get the competitive advantage if in times of uncertainty you double down and you invest in the capacity and leadership of your team to push forward. So fear tells us to pull back. Smart leaders are investing in themselves and their team. Which brings me to my last point. Board engagement matters. Your board is your secret weapon if they're engaged. And guess what? I have a training coming up on March 4th that will help you activate your board in fundraising. Don't miss it. You can register on my website. Send your board members. It's free. It will help them to understand what fundraising is and how they can help. So here's your challenge. Flip the script. Instead of asking what could go wrong, ask what could go right. Because that's where the real breakthroughs happen. And if you want to take action right now, sign up for my March 4th board fundraising training. It's all about getting your board aligned and activated so you don't have to do this alone. Sign up@riawong.com if this episode resonated with you, send it to a fellow nonprofit leader who needs a mindset reset. We're in this together. Let's make it happen. See you next time. And remember, momentum is built. Not let's go. Hey fundraisers. Looking to nail those big fundraising asks? Check out my Big Ask gift program@riawong.com bag. Say goodbye to uncertainty and hello to confidence with my program. Get expert strategies and personalized support to secure those game changing donations. Don't let fear hold you back. Join me and take your fundraising to new heights. We're enrolling now@riawong.com bag. That's riawong.com bag. So if you like big asks and you cannot lie, I'll see you in the program.