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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 Foreign. Welcome to nonprofit Lowdown. I'm your host, Rhea Wong. Hey, podcast listeners, it's Rhea Wong with you once again with nonprofit Lowdown. Today is a solo episode, and I wanted to talk today about something I've really been thinking a lot about. You know what your donor feels before you've said a single word? They feel you. Your energy, your panic, your hope, your desperation. All of it. It's transmitted before you finish your opening sentence. And that's not woo, that's science. And it's about to change how you think about every donor conversation that you have. Here's a study that most fundraisers have never heard of, and it should wreck you a little bit. There's this researcher named Albert Mehrabian who broke down what actually drives communication in emotional conversations. 7% is the words that you say, 38% is your tone of voice, and 55% is body language. Sit with that for a second. 55% of your message is your body. On a phone call, they can't see you, so your tone just became 93% of your message. You know what your tone sounds like when you're scared? It's tight, it's fast, it's over prepared, it's performative. Donors feel it. And they can't necessarily name it, but they feel it. And when they feel your panic, when they feel your fear, when they feel your anxiety, their generosity contracts every time. So when I say equanimity is a fundraising strategy, I'm not being philosophical, I'm being clinical. Your emotional state is your pitch. Full stop. Here's what's happening right now in the world, and I know that you can feel it. Markets are down. Everyone's screaming about the potential economic crisis coming. The news is loud, wars are happening. And frankly, like you, your donors are anxious. And in the face of anxiety, a lot of fundraisers are doing exactly the wrong thing. They're going quiet. This reminds me of the height of COVID where fundraisers didn't know what to say, so they said nothing at all. And I get it. It feels respectful. It feels like reading the room, but it's not. It's abandonment. It actually reminded me of a conversation I had with a man about an organization he was running that focused on employment support for immigrants. And he was actually based in Minneapolis and his board was counseling him to not say a lot about the work because felt like it was conflicting with all of the other things that was, that were happening with ICE in Minneapolis right now. And in fact, what he should have done was exactly the opposite. He should be out there, he should be shouting it from the rooftops. He should be talking about this issue and how it impacts the moment. Because here's what your donors think when you go silent. They think, my fundraiser disappeared when things got hard. That's a withdrawal from a relationship account that you've spent years building. And those withdrawals are brutal. The fundraisers who come out of this moment with stronger portfolios won't be the ones with the best case statements. They'll be the ones who showed up steady when everyone else was hiding. The market for calm is wide open right now. Every inbox or donor has a screaming urgency and crisis. Every organization is doing fear based copy. Give now where it all falls apart. Emergency match. The world is on fire. And then there's you. Grounded, curious, not pitching, just there. That is your category of one. There's a saying in martial arts, some of you may know, that Bruce Lee is a personal hero of mine. And the saying is that the most dangerous person in the room is the most relaxed one. So think about that. The tense fighter is reactive. They're already burning energy. They're already behind. The relaxed fighter is available. They can read what's actually happening. They're operating from their prefrontal cortex, not their amygdala. They respond instead of react. They have access to everything they've trained. And I don't think major gift fundraising is so different. The tense fundraiser walks in, manage scripted, running a performance. The relaxed fundraiser walks in, ready, listening, able to follow where the conversation actually goes. It's the same training, but completely different results. That is equanimity. It's not checked out. It's not pretending everything's fine. It's stable enough to be fully present even when things are hard. And here's the thing that people miss. Equanimity is not a personality trait. You don't have it or you don't. It's a practice and it's trainable. You want to know why fundraisers go silent during uncertainty? It's not Cowardice. It's overwhelm. They don't know who needs a call. They don't know what they said last time. They don't know where the relationship stands. Every outreach becomes a decision made from scratch, under stress, with incomplete information. And that's frankly, an impossible setup. And it's no wonder people are avoiding. Here's the pattern. The fundraiser who panics during a crisis was already operating on hope, not a system. They were relying on memory and bursts of energy. The crisis didn't create the problem, it revealed it. And the fundraiser who stays grounded, They've built something. They have a floor beneath them, and that floor is an operating system. When you sit down Monday morning and know exactly who you're calling, why you're calling them, and what you learned last time, the bar to pick up the phone drops to almost nothing. So preparation is equanimity. They're not separate things. If it's not on the scorecard, it didn't happen. So I want to make this a little bit more concrete. Your donor says, I don't know. Everything feels so uncertain right now. I'm not sure what to do. Here's the panicked fundraiser response. And I've heard versions of this said with the best intentions. I know it's really hard. We're actually really worried, too, about what the next few months look like. And that's actually why I wanted to talk to you today. So what just happened there? You confirmed their fear and you added your own anxiety on top. Then you pivoted to an ask. Their nervous system just got louder. They are now less likely to give and they feel worse than before. You called. Here's the equanimous response. Here's the calm response. Yeah, it's a moment that's asking a lot of people what's been coming up for you. Specifically, full stop. There's no agenda, no pivot, just a question asked from genuine curiosity with no attachment to what comes next. That question signals, I'm not here to pitch, I'm here to understand. And it actually tells you something true about where they are, which makes everything that follows more useful. That conversation might end in a gift. It might end in a deferred commitment. It might just be a conversation. But it will never be a withdrawal. You showed up. You were grounded. You asked before you told. That's a positive every time. There's one more thing that's worth naming here, which is that major donors are what you might consider to be high ticket buyers. And there's a principle in high ticket sales that Changes how you think about this. Here it is. Those who pay the most pay the most attention. You cannot fake equanimity in front of a major donor. They've been in enough rooms, they've talked to enough people, they feel the difference between someone who is settled and someone who is white. Knuckling their way through a prepared script. And over years of relationship, they make unconscious decisions about how much to trust you, how much to rely on you, how much to invest through you based on those felt assessments. So the practitioners who earn the most across every industry, not just fundraising, project certainty. Not arrogance, certainty. A calm, unshakable sense that they know what they're doing, the work matters. And that the right person to be in the conversation, that certainly is what your donor is looking for right now. Not someone tell them it's all going to be okay. Someone who is already okay. That person gets the seven figure conversation every time. So if this resonates for you, I've got three moves for you, because you know how I do. Here it is. Move one. Prepare. Before the call, prepare three things. Where does the relationship stand? What did you learn last time? What are you genuinely curious about today? Not what do you want to say, what do you want to understand? That shift alone changes your tone. Curiosity is grounded. Performance is anxious. Move 2, 90 second inventory before your first call of the day. Not meditation, not journaling, just 90 seconds. Where are you actually right now? Anxious, Tired? Scattered? Fine, name it. Because if you don't name it, it runs the call. If you name it, you choose. I do a meditation every single morning. And one of my favorite meditations is by Anthony d'. Mellow. And he talks about the fact that we cannot be. That our emotional state is not the clouds that come and the clouds that go. That in fact, we are the sky. And so the more we recognize the fact that these emotions come and go and they are merely clouds. But as the sky, I remain untouched by the things that come and go. It provides a tremendous amount of control over the situation. And while I know it's easier said than done, and it's certainly difficult in the face of the chaos that's happening in the world to maintain your equanimity. The first step is the awareness of the feeling that you are having such that it is not running the show in the background. And then your third move. Trust your system, your operating system, your strategy with fundraising isn't just a productivity tool. It's a psychological infrastructure when you know who needs to be called what you promised. Where each relationship stands you carry less ambient anxiety. And less ambient anxiety means more equanimity in the room and the math. Maths. So here's what I want you to walk away with. The most important thing you can build right now is not a better case statement. It's not a new ask strategy. It's the ability to be the calmest, most grounded, most genuinely present person in the donor's life during a moment of real turbulence. Right now, your donor has financial advisors managing fear, friends venting at them. 100 organizations flooding their inbox with urgency. What they almost certainly don't have is a fundraiser who calls to understand. Not to pitch, not to report, not to ask, but to genuinely understand where they are right now. And that person who calls becomes indispensable. The person calls. That person gets a call when the estate plan is being updated, that person gets the seven figure conversation. Equanimity is not a nice quality to have. It's your competitive advantage. It is in the truest sense a fundraising strategy. So if you show up steady, you water the flowers, not the weeds. That is your job. Here's one more thing before you go. If this episode hit something real, if you're sitting here thinking, I have the donors, but I don't have the system that keeps me grounded enough to work them, well, I want you. I want you. At my next live webinar, we're going deep on the major gifts operating system, the scorecard and the weekly rhythm that keeps you steady when everything else is loud. So head to my website, Rio Wong.com and grab your spot. I'll put the link in the show notes. Seeds are limited, so we keep it small so we can actually work, not just launch. Register now. Let's fix this. 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.