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What the Fundraising
219: What the Fundraising: Embracing and Enabling the People Behind the Purpose - Mallory Erickson
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- [00:05]
Mallory Erickson
Hey, it's Mallory. Before we jump into today's episode, I just want to give you a name to look out for in 2025. It is rare that I come across a tech tool that's designed to help address fundraiser burnout by actually reducing our overwhelm and making actions easier to do. But I was floored when I saw the magic of Cadenza.
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So I want you to keep an eye out for that name, Cadenza.
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Make sure you're subscribed to the podcast and my email because we are going to have some fun analys announcements coming in 2025 and if you just can't wait any longer, you can go check out what they're building@get cadenza.com that's get cadenza.com I can't wait to hear what you think.
- [00:48]
Hi everyone. Mallory Erickson here. Today, I am not actually bringing a guest on what the fundraising. I'm doing something a little bit different. When I wrote the book what the Fundraising Embracing Enabling the People behind the Purpose, I found out pretty early on from the publishers that I probably wouldn't be able to record the audiobook, which broke my heart a little bit, considering that I feel like so much of the content and research that's inside the book is a result of the incredible conversations I have been able to have on this podcast. And so while the audiobook might not completely be in my voice, I still actually wanted to read the introduction to all of you today because the introduction in many ways introduces you to me.
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For those of you who might be new to listening to this podcast, it.
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Introduces you to kind of the primary.
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Argument that I'm trying to make for.
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The sector about the interconnectedness of how we feel and what we do. And I want you to hear it in my voice because I spent so long figuring out the words that belonged on these pages.
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And I read it out loud and I listened to it being read with, you know, these safe and responsible AI tools. But I just need you to hear this in my voice. So this is the introduction to what the Fundraising Embracing and Enabling the People behind the Purpose. It's my first book, maybe my only book, and it came out on October 1, 2024. So the introduction, like so many fundraisers, I became one accidentally. A few years out of college, I applied for jobs in the nonprofit sector and got hired for a position to run a community garden. Though I didn't know anything about plants, I was eager to get my hands dirty, so to speak. Soon after starting in a program director role, I found myself doing almost anything the organization needed, including hiring, event planning, curriculum design, and student trip management. Wearing multiple hats is not an uncommon experience for people working in the nonprofit sector. As the years went by, promotions followed. I zigzagged through my organization's hierarchy and even though I was responsible for developing programs and had little to do with fundraising, I was catapulted upwards towards managing Director of the entire organization. With that title came a silent but pressing responsibility. Raising money. Lots of money. Money I didn't know how to ask for as the first person in the organization to step into this role. There was no onboarding process, little guidance on how to perform the daily tasks required, and definitely no advice on managing the intense emotions from being ghosted or rejected when asking for thousands of dollars. And forget about any tips for how to ask for that amount of money in the first place. My boss sent me out with a few home printed brochures, a mission statement, and a vague directive to raise money by just building relationships. Here's the truth. I didn't have the slightest clue about how to become a successful fundraiser. It wasn't like I was an accountant who was trained to be an accountant. I was a political science and sociology major with a master's in education and a garden job that I was learning on the fly. And so I scrambled. At the time, I didn't know of any class or nonprofit 101 training that could ease my anxiety. And it seemed like everything was on the line. My salary, my community garden, and the future of other planned garden projects for which I had unintentionally become responsible. I didn't know where to start, but I knew I wanted to make a difference in the world and that it took money to have the impact I wanted to have. So I decided to just try this fundraising thing with no clue what I was getting into. Making the Ask I remember my first big ask. My boss arranged for me to meet a key donor at a coffee shop. I got to the spot a little bit early to change in the bathroom from my dirt caked Carhartt overalls into a pencil skirt. After this quick change, I returned to my car so nervous I honestly felt like I was going to throw up. This lesson would come much later, but the shift from running the environmental literacy program to fundraising needed more than just a change of clothes. As I sat in my front seat reviewing notes, a hummingbird zipped by and snacked from a feeder in front of the cafe. I straightened out my clearance sail skirt and felt my heart rate match the pace of the hummingbird's wings. Just an hour before, I had been present and authentic in the garden with my students, connecting with the kids and feeling alive. If you had asked me then, with my hands in the soil, I could have passionately articulated the importance of our environmental education programs and the urgent need for them in schools nationwide. But as I sat in my car and tried to prepare for the donor meeting, my sense of purpose and confidence were gone. My palms were clenched and pulsing at my sides. I grabbed the meeting briefing sheet from my backpack and read through the donor's previous involvement with our organization and their large pass donations. It was extensive. Even as I prepared to meet with someone who clearly believed in our organization, I felt like I was going into this meeting to ask someone to do something they really didn't want to do. Donate. This thought that I was trying to strong arm someone into giving created a toxic power dynamic in my head. The thought then developed into a narrative that I believed was true. The donor had the money and thus all of the value, while I had nothing to offer them. This story solidified my inferior position. I the fundraiser was trying to get the person with more power, the donor, to give me something I didn't deserve. Sweaty palms, a racing heart, and nausea ensued as I tried to settle my nerves and reconcile my smallness to my big ask. Breathe, Mallory, I heard myself say. Think positive. But even though my brain tried to counter these worries with practiced abundance mantras, it was useless. To my core, I felt unworthy. My body was trapped in the tension of the unspoken power dynamic and uncertainty. It didn't help that I had been told to build a relationship with the donor before discussing money. That felt so confusing. How do I build a genuine relationship if I feel like I can't be completely transparent or feel like I have a hidden agenda? How do I build a strong relationship if I'm too frightened to speak freely? What do I pretend the relationship is about if it's not ultimately about investment in my organization? Two minutes to our meeting time, I took one last deep breath, opened the car door, and stepped out into the spring sunshine. As I walked toward the coffee shop, layers of my true self fell away. When I got to the door, I was a performer, a shell of who I really was. As I entered the air conditioning, I had a fleeting moment of recognition that this was no way to build real relationships. All other real relationships in my life were based on trust and transparency, so why would this be any different? But I shoved that thought away and pulled my shoulders back. This version of fundraising persuading hounding, begging, trying to be selected as worthy was all I knew. As I rounded the corner to find the donor's table, I gave myself one final pep talk. Make it work, Mallory. Get the money. Even though I ultimately raised money during the meeting, I felt so much discomfort in my body that I was sure I was a terrible fundraiser because of it. What? The fundraising. The thought, will I ever be good at this? Stayed with me for years. It popped up every time I met with a donor and the answer was clear by the time I walked out. No. But I kept trying. Even when I switched organizations and found myself yet again responsible for raising money. Even in a new environment, the negative self talk, downward spiraling and endless pressure, never subsided. My days dragged. Meeting with a donor, writing marketing materials, sending emails asking for donations, and getting ghosted only to be thrust into another donor meeting. I managed. I cried. I kept going, trying to make a difference. As soon as I realized that fundraising meant holding the organization's fate in my hands, I never felt more alone. After some time, things took a turn for the worse. I started to get sick. Really sick. My job made me physically ill. After a few years of this desperate plea focused event and campaign hamster wheel, strange aches started to wind down my spine from all of the tension, resulting in pain that became chronic sleepless nights and bedridden days followed. Thoughts raced through my mind. There's no way good fundraisers feel like this. I must be a bad fundraiser. My pain, I would realize years later, was deeply tied to how I was taught to fundraise. The pressure to appear like I had it all together, to accept money from anyone, to treat money as the only thing of value, and to give in to the power dynamics that were intrinsically tied to the nonprofit system as a result of transactional fundraising methodologies. My chronic stress was also tied to my perfectionism, my tendency to please others, and my habitual self criticism. This was compounded by feelings of unworthiness in my role as a fundraiser and the constant uncertainty I felt about reaching that forever moving fundraising benchmark on which the fate of my organization rested. My body was physically suffering due to the ongoing stress and negative thinking. The situation deteriorated to the point where I nearly quit the nonprofit sector. At the lowest point in my career, I made a pivotal discovery. I initially thought my brain and body were working against me, but they were actually acting as the alarm I needed to make a change. I chose to stay and explore new approaches to fundraising. Since those early years in the trenches of frontline fundraising, I have gone from exhausted and miserable to empowered, embodied, and legitimately enjoying this work. How I learned ways to manage my discomfort and shift my fundraising practices so I could raise more for my organization sustainably and reliably. What once felt impossible, fundraising without chronic stress and overwhelm became my reality once I understood and honored a new methodology of fundraising focused on alignment. My unique framework, the Power Partners Formula, teaches fundraisers how to raise more from the right funders without hounding people for money. Since its inception in 2021, I've trained more than 60,000 fundraisers using elements of this Win Win framework which combines science backed practices and fundraising strategy, executive coaching, habit and behavior design and design thinking. In this book, we won't cover every tool in the formula, but we will explore some core elements that shape my approach, modern fundraising strategy, executive coaching tools, and insightful research provided by psychologists and scientists on my podcast what the Fundraising. Together, these elements form a comprehensive foundation to preemptively address and resolve many of the challenges fundraisers encounter. Central to this exploration is the integration of executive coaching tools. Executive coaching enhances performance, develops leadership skills, and fosters personal growth. It offers a process of self discovery that enhances our consciousness of our beliefs and behaviors and reveals internal barriers to our success. This methodology is particularly valuable in a field like fundraising, where self awareness, emotional intelligence, and a deep understanding of human behavior are essential. I spent the last five years learning about systemic negative emotions in the nonprofit sector and exploring how those emotions can be mitigated, managed, and improved by executive coaching tools. These tools enable us to see where our beliefs, emotions, thoughts, and actions intersect with our results.
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Executive coaching teaches us how to harness.
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Our power, redirect our own thoughts, break negative beliefs, and create actions that empower us to achieve our goals. What's interesting about executive coaching is that the tools map with what psychologists and neuroscientists have noticed about the human autonomic nervous system, which contains two the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system. In this book, we're going to focus on the sympathetic nervous system, which is the internal alarm clock and defense system that all mammals have to protect against threats and danger. You might not be familiar with the term sympathetic nervous system, but you are likely familiar with the term our culture uses to describe fight or flight. This phase, coined by psychologist and Harvard medical professor Walter Bradford Cannon, describes the unconscious biological reaction mammals experience when encountering a threat. If our body chooses to fight when in the sympathetic nervous system, it can result in anger, fists, and raised voices. The flight response Although it might literally propel someone to run away primarily manifests in modern society as procrastination, avoidance of difficult conversations, intellectualization, overworking on unrelated tasks, and excessive preparation. Although fight or flight dominated the conversation for most of the 20th century, researchers have recently identified several tertiary responses, one of which is freeze. Studies have shown that when mammals experience a threatening situation, central neural pathways activate, causing the body to literally freeze. We often experience this freeze response when we experience intense fear. We might not all drop to the floor, but a freeze response can manifest as withdrawal, emotional numbing, paralysis, and decision making or complete disengagement. Other nuanced experiences can occur, yet fighting, fleeing, and freezing are some of our primary methods of dealing with conflict, fear, and threats. No matter which response our bodies choose, it signals a stress response. A stress response is complex, but it often emerges as physical symptoms like goosebumps, nausea, the urge to scream, which is fight, the desire to run away, flight, or feeling paralyzed and unable to act freeze. But why does this matter for fundraisers? In my research, I have found that traditional fundraising experiences like ghosting, power dynamics, and isolation, as well as emotions regularly experienced by fundraisers like overwhelm, self doubt, guilt, unworthiness, and fear of rejection, are linked to episodes of fight, flight, and freeze, resulting in the chronic stress that leads to burnout. When we experience chronic stress or burnout, the consequences are severe. In addition to the impact on our mental and physical health, which should be enough right there, science has shown that humans who experience chronic stress also biologically struggle to build authentic relationships and connect with other humans. Chronic stress also prevents decision making, limits empathy, and prevents people from engaging in the community, all of which are necessary to do our jobs. Although I'm not a neuroscientist or psychologist, I've interviewed top psychology and neuroscience experts on my podcast what the Fundraising to discover the largely unrecognized connection between the nervous system and the enablement and success of fundraisers. The experience and emotions psychologists and neuroscientists use to describe chronic stress closely correlate to the Energy Leadership Index assessment provided by ipec, the Institute for Professional Excellence in Coaching, where I received my coaching certification. But no matter which framework you explore, executive coaching or psychology, the results are clear. When humans experience chronic stress, we cannot make decisions or connections, and we definitely cannot fundraise effectively. Through my research and coaching, I've realized that people are expecting the linchpin of the third largest employment sector in the United States, fundraisers to do our work in a state of near constant panic, stress, and overwhelm, which is the exact cycle psychological state that inhibits our ability to take the actions most critical to fundraising. Building Relationships Our psychological state is increasingly important to understand when we consider how stress further affects our behavior. In 2023, I surveyed fundraisers about how they felt about their jobs and when asked what they do when they feel stressed about asking for money, 75% of fundraisers stated they do a task that's not fundraising. So not only does stress affect our ability to build relationships, but it also hinders our ability to take any fundraising action at all. This means that fundraisers who are experiencing chronic stress will fundamentally struggle to perform the tasks every webinar, consultant and online course tells them is the key to fundraising successfully creating engagement opportunities and building authentic relationships. Stressed out fundraisers thus cannot fundraise in efficient and effective ways. All of this matters because we depend on fundraisers to support the fundamental existence, never mind growth, of the nonprofit sector. Although the fight, flight and freeze responses are subconscious experiences, with the knowledge of their existence we can prevent these biological systems from dominating our reality. Instead of being activated by situations that cause stress, like a big donor meeting or an important pitch presentation, we can tap into executive coaching techniques that help manage our stress response during these activities so that we can remain authentic, embodied and open to connection. Fundraisers need to be able to take effective action and authentically connect because relationships and engagement inspire donor behavior. Most training and conversations focus on fundraising actions as if they're an easy task list and the subsequent donor outcomes are simple if then statements. For example, if I just pick up the phone and call the donor, then the donor will increase their donation. If I send a mass text message, then we will reach our campaign goal. Those things might be true, but when we oversimplify, we're missing one of the largest influencers of success, how the fundraiser feels while taking those actions. Donor actions are primarily reactions to the way fundraising is conducted and serve as lagging indicators in fundraising data. This is why the experience of fundraisers is so important because the effectiveness of fundraising is closely linked to the stress levels of the fundraisers themselves. Higher stress can hinder fundraisers ability to establish relationships or to prompt donors, making it less likely for donors to engage and participate. This is why we need to focus on the fundraisers before we can focus on the fundraising. At the end of the day, fundraiser behavior is the leading indicator of fundraising success.
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Hey, it's Mallory. I remember the frustration of managing multiple tools, payment processors, spreadsheets, CRMs, all while syncing data manually. It was inefficient, prone to mistakes, and worst of all created missed opportunities to connect with donors. But now there's GiveButter Plus. Designed to simplify your fundraising. GiveButter plus reduces tool management complexity, helps you save time, and most importantly, enhances donor experiences. I'm so excited about this because your time should be spent on building connected relationships, not juggling tools. Start your free 30 day trial today at givebutter.com Mallory.
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Who are you and why are you here? If you're reading this book, you care about the state of the nonprofit sector. You are firmly aware that giving is down across the sector, and if the sector continues to decline at this rate, the nonprofit sector will ultimately disappear. According to a report from the Fundraising Effectiveness Project, there have been decreases in the number of donors of all giving sizes, but especially among individual donors giving small gifts between a dollar and a hundred dollars, the number of dollars given and the rate of donor retention, particularly for the largest donors. This stark reality has massive implications for society. In 2019, Giving USA reported the lowest.
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Giving level in 40 years.
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To underscore the dip, research from the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy noted that in 2000, an estimated 66% of Americans gave to charity. By 2014, that figure decreased to 55%, and in 2016 it fell to 53%. Currently, that number has dipped to less than half of Americans. Nonprofit Value, expertise and commitment are needed everywhere. In education, where the nonprofit provides additional classes and services to children to healthcare access, where we launch and fund clinics and doctors in areas with inadequate medical access to the environment, where organizations research and implement strategies to reduce climate change. No matter the location, mission or receiving benefactors, nonprofits are critical to the planet and humanity's success. Moreover, the nonprofit sector serves as the bridge between society and government. Where the government doesn't provide much needed social services, we step in beyond the services and programs that nonprofits provide. The nonprofit sector is the third largest in the United States, employing 11.9 million people. Only retail trade and manufacturing out mass nonprofits and employment. The decline of the sector will have layers of impact on society. There aren't enough conversations happening about how important the nonprofit sector is to our economy and society. But even fewer conversations are happening about the folks who bring in all the money to make the work our fundraisers. Fundraisers, by definition, are responsible for moving money into the sector. Yet many who do fundraising don't identify as a fundraiser. The truth is, I didn't call myself a fundraiser for many years. That term felt uncomfortable and full of stigma. I didn't want any of that. And yet I was still doing the work. I put in long hours and devoted years of my life to the mission. I was deeply committed. Yet, like so many of us, I.
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Was very uncomfortable doing my job's basic.
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Duties, like asking for money, dealing with rejection, and receiving large sums of money. If you are one of these people, I want you to know that you're not alone and you are not a bad fundraiser because you feel uncomfortable or overwhelmed by your responsibilities. I wish I could go back in time and tell my younger self that most fundraisers deal with discomfort and resistance in one way or another. It's normal and it doesn't mean anything is wrong with you. In fact, it makes perfect sense that doubting yourself, getting rejected, and getting ghosted would stress you out. It's how the human body works. Again, we and all other mammals have a nervous system that's more than 500 million years old, and it's trained to keep us safe. Asking for money is uncomfortable for most people, and so it's activating our natural biology to run away from the threat. But although it might feel like it, when it comes to the level of stress in your body, that donor isn't a lion trying to eat you. I want to assure you that there are ways to approach fundraising without constant fear, doubt, or being on the brink of tears. It's possible to engage in this work feeling calm, secure, and empowered when we have the right tools, when we learn to honor the deep relationship between our mind and body and move resources in alignment and toward our values. Fundraising can be an energizing, sacred and healing act. Fundraising can change once we can internalize that, calm our system, and learn how to step into our true inherent power. Sector Leaders if you aren't a fundraiser and you find yourself here, you might be someone fundraisers rely on. Perhaps you're a sector leader, a nonprofit consultant, a leader in a tech company that supports nonprofits, a community member, a donor, the head of a foundation, a board member, or maybe a corporate philanthropist. I want to invite you into this conversation, and I urge you to stick.
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Around when it feels uncomfortable.
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You play an important role in this dialogue, but you might not be aware of some of the limitations frontline fundraisers face. There is a problem with the state of fundraising, and it actually goes much.
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Deeper than lack of money, donors, or even time.
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The root of the problem originates with how the sector thinks about fundraisers. This knowledge gap is hurting your primary goal moving more money into the nonprofit sector and fulfilling the missions and visions of the organizations you support. In addition to what we cover in this book sector leadership needs to start to prioritize key performance indicators that enable fundraisers to break out of transactional methods and prioritize the actions that lead to healthy fundraising practices, sustainable donor engagement, connected relationships, and fundraisers who actually want to stay in their roles. As I often say, don't tell me what you care about, show me what you track. I hope this book provides additional clarity on why this shift is so critical. The First Step Forward the future of the nonprofit sector depends on providing fundraisers with tools that support the whole fundraiser, including the inner experience of the fundraiser, not just templates or trainings that focus solely on fundraising strategy. It's crucial to create a path forward. This book is my contribution to that effort. It's designed for anyone committed to a more equitable and just world, recognizing that this goal is intrinsically linked to the well being of nonprofits and the well being of nonprofits is directly connected to the health and wellness of the people inside of them. Viewing the health of the sector through this perspective means caring about global issues while also caring about individual fundraisers and our ability to connect and build strong relationships. If we lose this capacity, the entire nonprofit sector risks collapse. Alignment Fundraising Once we learn the tools of executive coaching and use those tools.
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To harness our energy and ground our.
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System, we will be able to increase how present we are in our fundraising work. We will be able to build truly authentic relationships with donors that honor the value fundraisers and organizations bring to the table. This shift will enable us to move away from hounding people for money and start to identify mutually beneficial strategic partnerships. There is a strategy and a process to this. It is the methodology I call Alignment Fundraising. Alignment fundraising gives us the opportunity to transition from a scarcity, mindset and self doubt and is rooted in the idea that great fundraising is not an ask, it's an offer. However, for us to implement alignment fundraising in our organizations, we have to be connected and aligned within ourselves. By addressing our own limiting beliefs and inner barriers, we prevent much of the chronic stress, overwhelm and fear that describes the experience of so many fundraisers. Instead, we get to build power partnerships. Working with power partners makes fundraising more sustainable and feels good to all involved. This is a wildly different approach than what we typically see in our sector. What is possible with Alignment Fundraising? Once I created and applied the principles of alignment fundraising, I led the transformation of an organization's revenue from 1 million to more than 3 million in a short time and with relative ease. But the most significant change was that I began to enjoy fundraising. I felt more present, empowered and connected alignment Fundraising helped me realize I could engage with funders differently, inviting them to partner with me instead of just soliciting donations. This approach shifted the power dynamics, creating a relationship of equality rather than neediness. I stopped merely asking for money and started offering people the chance to contribute to something meaningful. This change in perspective led me to seek out power partners instead of just just donors. With this mindset shift, I could finally go to funder meetings calmly and ask, do we have the same goals and values? If the answer was yes, great. We could move forward to talk about what might be possible if we decided to work together. If it was a no, it was no problem. It wasn't about me, and the no gave me the clarity to move on and prioritize my time efficiently. Over the last few years, I've helped more than 300 organizations find their power partners. The framework empowers them to overcome limiting beliefs, feel confident in their fundraising methods, build long term relationships with fundraisers, and successfully raise more money. What the fundraising Teaches elements of this framework while giving sector leaders a unique insight into the fundraisers daily lives and struggles I'm not going to go through what's in each chapter of this book.
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But I want to give a few.
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Of the additional details from the introduction before I go Acknowledging Underlying Systemic Issues the nonprofit sector faces many underlying systemic issues, including racism, classism, and sexism. These deeply embedded forces have shaped the.
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History and present reality of our sector.
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Nonprofits that work with and center disproportionately affected communities, including communities of color, LGBTQ, and disabled communities, have faced extraordinary challenges securing necessary funding. Nonprofit workers whose identities are marginalized in our sector routinely face extreme opposition, including structural barriers that make fundraising work particularly difficult. I wrote this book to make accessible the tools that I have found helpful in my own journey as a fundraiser, but I am under no illusion that they will fix the systemic inequities that shape our sector. White supremacy, sexism, and ableism determine the context in which we do our fundraising. I'm grateful to the sector leaders whose work is helping us unpack and more deeply understand these intersecting issues. I particularly want to acknowledge the work and thought leadership provided by the community centric fundraising community and books such as Emergent Strategy, Shaping Changing Worlds by Adrienne Maree Brown, the Revolution Will Not Be beyond the Nonprofit Industrial Complex and Collecting Joy, Pain, Freedom and Anti Black Racism in the Charitable Sector. These thought leaders and resources, among many others, have advanced this critical analysis and the necessary solutions for our sector. In this book I will present strategies and solutions for what I believe to be many of the reasons we experience exacerbated chronic stress as fundraisers. They are generalizations and do not account for the complexity of fundraiser identities, trauma, workplace toxicity, neurodivergence, or any other layer and lens through which we do this work. This is not because these experiences don't matter, but because they matter immensely and deserve focused attention from those with expertise and lived experience. My hope is that the tools shared here inspire inquiry, challenge, adaptation and further development that can continue to strengthen our.
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Collective work to create change and improve our organizations.
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Case Studies and Research throughout this book I feature Power Partners Formula clients. We explore their individual relationships with fundraising, chronic stress, and the steps they took to positively affect their well being and improve their fundraising. We also explore research from top neuroscientists, psychologists, fundraising experts and thought leaders, pulled mostly from interviews I've hosted on my podcast what the Fundraising. For a full list of those episodes topics and the links to the guests work, visit mallorykson.com allshows through candid conversations, we explore the nervous system, our human ability to connect, and how chronic stress inhibits our ability to reach our goals. I will connect the dots between the research and interviews with fundraisers to showcase the correlation between our stress and nervous system and our ability to succeed. My goal with these case studies and research is to paint a picture I've clearly seen in my life and work. There is a relationship between how our brains and bodies work and our ability as fundraisers to move money into the sector. Finally, I refer to my own experiences as a fundraiser and then as an executive coach to further demonstrate the correlation between fundraisers success and our ability to stay in calm, connected states. I use personal anecdotes to showcase what I've noticed to be true about the relationship between what is happening inside of us and our ability to fundraise and the profound shift I've seen in those who use alignment fundraising. When I made this shift, I learned to pay attention to my chronic stress and more consistently stay in a connected state of mind. I could raise millions of dollars with more ease and less stress. But I also want to make something clear. My research is incomplete. Our work as fundraisers and the landscape we navigate is always changing, so there may be something that won't carry over after this book is published. I'm not done learning and growing just because I've chosen to publish this book. Not only do I recognize that a lot of the scientific research references are limited in their western centric lens and stem from white normative culture, but I also know I haven't learned everything out there about the challenges that different fundraisers face. I always allow grace and space to stay curious, stand corrected, or change my mind. As my research, perspective and opinions evolve, I invite disagreement and conversation to unfold. From this analysis and from that, I know we will push the conversation and this sector forward. Whether you're a sector leader or a fundraiser, here's what I want you to know. There is a different, better and more sustainable future possible for our sector when we take what we know about being human and apply it to our work. Opportunities expand. I hope this book will provide a transformative shift in how we address the challenges in fundraising and the current giving crisis. It's imperative that we start by redirecting our attention toward understanding, supporting and improving the lives of fundraisers. It is time we finally, truly embrace.
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And enable the people behind the purpose. If you don't already have a copy of the book and you want one, you can go to mallorykson.com book I.
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Tried to read as much of the.
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Chapter word for word as possible, but.
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Here'S something else I just sort of.
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Want to say, which is that I mentioned that this is an incomplete body of work, and it's not a body of work that I alone should ever even attempt to complete. And I really believe that the next.
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Steps from here, whether you love the book or hate the book, see yourself in the book or don't see yourself.
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In the book, is to talk about that. I feel really open to being challenged and want that conversation in our sector to be had. I'm happy to have it publicly on this podcast. If you want to come on and grill me about things or tell me all the things you don't agree with, I'm happy to have it on panels or at events. I just think that what it's going.
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To take in order for us to move forward is to include the concepts.
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That are in this book in other conversations that we're having about the crises our sector is facing and the fundraiser crisis in particular.
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It's not that I think this book.
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Is everything or has everything. It's that I want the concepts in here to be a part of the conversation that we're having. And I'm really open to hearing what's missing and what's next. And I think that that type of dialogue and challenge and nuance and inclusion of different perspectives and opportunities is really important. This is my perspective and my story, and I don't expect it to be everyone's. I'm so honored by and appreciative of the folks who have shared with me that they see themselves in this book or that this book has helped them gain clarity on their role, help them fundraise differently.
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It means so much to me because the only reason I wrote this was for you.
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And I believe more than ever that what we need is nuance. There's so much out there these days that's so binary. So yes or no, right?
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Wrong.
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The reality is our work and fundraising, it's complicated. There are layers and there are multiple perspectives that can all be true at the same time.
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And we don't often allow the space.
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For things like that.
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And so whether it's having listened to the introduction and some of the concepts.
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Here, maybe sharing the introduction with somebody else, that you want to be aware of the concept here, writing me an email about what you don't agree with, inviting me on your podcast or show or speaking opportunity to challenge me publicly.
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I just.
- [38:18]
I want to invite dialogue. I feel like the more I've come out with content like this, the more separated I have felt from the ground conversations. I have them inside the Alignment fundraising community every day. But I feel like there's a space, a necessary space that needs to be created for us to talk about challenges openly and vulnerably together. And so that's one of my invitations for 2025. I hope that as you enter this new year, you are thinking about what it looks like for you to be able to do your work in a more sustainable way, in a way that feels good inside your brain and body and builds towards the purpose and mission that you're so hard for. I. I'm so grateful. I think this episode is coming out on the very last day of the year of 2024. It has been quite a year, and I'm just so grateful for all of you. No matter what happened this year, I'm grateful for you for sticking with it. I'm grateful for you for putting yourself out there.
- [39:27]
I'm grateful for you if you took a sabbatical to take care of yourself.
- [39:31]
Or you left a toxic workplace, the work that you're doing, the people you're being, it's not easy.
- [39:37]
It's not easy to go against the status quo.
- [39:40]
It's not easy to go against the norm of society. It's not easy to make change. If it was, everybody would do it. But you're doing it. You're doing it. And I'm just so grateful that you're doing it. So thank you. Happy New Year. I'm sending you all of my love, well wishes, cheering, etc. As we go in to 2025.
- [40:10]
Hey you.
- [40:10]
I hope you're loving all the free.
- [40:12]
Value you're getting right now from our guest. And speaking of free value, I've raised millions in the nonprofit space without sacrificing my integrity or my alignment, and I'm sharing how I did it in my free webinar how to Harness the Power of Prioritization to raise more without burning out.
- [40:30]
Go to Mallory Ericks.
- [40:31]
Com Workshop to register for the free training right now.
- [40:35]
I cannot wait to see you there.