Podcast: Reframing Fundraising: Strategies to Combat Scarcity Mindset with Mallory Erickson

Season 4, Episode 23
In this episode, Amy Eisenstein sits down with Mallory Erickson, fundraising expert, coach, and host of What The Fundraising podcast. Together, they dive deep into the origins of the scarcity mindset in the nonprofit sector, exploring how this pervasive mentality impacts fundraising practices and organizational culture.
Discover how historical factors shaped the dynamics between funders and nonprofits, creating hurdles that persist today. Learn about the connection between mindset and fundraising outcomes, and how neuroscience supports a shift away from scarcity thinking. Mallory also shares two practical tools—one for the mind and one for the body—to help fundraisers manage stress and stay grounded during high-pressure campaigns.
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Amy Eisenstein:
We are talking about the evolution of fundraising and its consequences on mindset and practice. Stick around.
Hi, I’m Amy Eisenstein. Andrea is taking today off. But today I have a very special guest with me, Mallory Erickson. Mallory is an executive coach, a fundraising consultant, and host of the podcast, What The Fundraising. And Mallory is a good friend and colleague of mine, so I’m really excited she’s here. Her signature framework, the Power Partners Formula, equips nonprofits with the unique tools needed to secure more fundraising and funding. I should say funding, not fundraising, but both fundraising and funding.
And today we are talking about her new book and I’m so excited, it’s called, What The Fundraising: Embracing and Enabling the People Behind the Purpose. And I highly, highly recommend it.
Hi, Mallory.
Mallory Erickson:
Hi, Amy. Thanks so much for having me and for having this conversation with me.
Amy Eisenstein:
Yeah, absolutely. I always learn things when I talk with you, so I’m super excited that you agree to do this and I know our listeners are going to learn a lot.
Where Does the Scarcity Mindset Come From?
So let’s dive into some of the concepts that you talk about in your new book. And let’s start with scarcity mindset origins. Where does the scarcity mindset come from?
Mallory Erickson:
Yeah. Well, I think you could likely trace it to a lot of different kind of combining factors, but I think the history of the nonprofit sector in particular, it’s sort of evolution out of capitalism, it’s rise in sort of like the gilded age and after with an emphasis on taxes and tax-deductible donations. And then a lot of the initial kind of founders of philanthropy, really treating nonprofits and philanthropy as sort of this side, I don’t know, trickle-down pool of money.
And that because there was a lot of donor preferences prioritized and Carnegie has this sort of famous quote to the needy and slothful, like he didn’t want his funding to go to particular folks and there was a lot of donor control over money.
All of those origins really set up this power dynamic between funders and nonprofits or volunteers, whoever was implementing that mission work, that led to that same type of the haves and the have-nots. Which then created this scarcity mindset or this sort of power dynamic around scarcity, not having the resources to ultimately be able to do our work.
That I think mixed with the reality that organizations have not been funded sufficiently to solve the problems that they are aiming to solve. And there continues to be a lot of sector-wide norms around funding that make nonprofits feel like they have to consistently do more with less. And then I think that mixed with stigma around talking about money, asking for money, all of these things sort of combine to create this scarcity mindset in the sector. And there are a lot of other things we could go into to detail around there too. But I think that gives you the overarching kind of framework of the history to now.
Material Scarcity vs. Scarcity Mindset
The other thing that I’ll say is that material scarcity is a thing and a lot of nonprofits are dealing with it in two ways.
- One, they’re watching real material scarcity being experienced by those that their organization aims to support and partner with.
- They also are often dealing with material scarcity in the funding of their own organization.
But material scarcity and scarcity mindset are two different things and I just want to make sure to call that out because material scarcity is real and that is not what I’m talking about here. I’m talking about the mindset that often layers on top of material scarcity that are beliefs that we hold about what is and isn’t possible, what is available to us, what we do have value around. And scarcity mindset adds a layer, a barrier layer to us as nonprofit professionals from being able to actually address that material scarcity.
So I just want to sort of name that because I think a lot of times people hear scarcity mindset and they’re like, “But we don’t have enough money.” And I’m like, yeah, different things. And so I just sort of want to name that out of the gate.
Amy Eisenstein:
Well, let me see if I understand what you’re saying.
The Neuroscience Behind the Scarcity Mindset
So it almost sounds like a self-fulfilling prophecy and sort of this vicious loop that organizations and people get into thinking we don’t have enough, so therefore we don’t have enough. Is that what you’re saying?
Mallory Erickson:
Yes, 100%. And I use that term a lot. And actually there’s a lot of science to sort of back this up, which is that our brains actually simulate our reality and sort of predict our reality into being. And so in the book I talk about the work of Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett, I talk of the work of Dr. Christian Busch who wrote about the science of serendipity.
And all of this neuroscience, what it shows us is we can only raise the amount of money we believe is out there to be raised. If we don’t think we can do it or that our donors don’t have this capacity or our donor pool will never step up to do blank, our brains literally will not find a solution for it. And so we absolutely continue to create these self-fulfilling prophecies.
Amy Eisenstein:
All right, so we’ll get to that in a minute. But before we do, let’s talk about, well, I’ll give you a choice. You want to talk about the very real problem or challenge of decline in giving or transactional norms or maybe some of both?
Mallory Erickson:
Yeah, we can talk about both because all the same or it’s all related in certain ways.
Amy Eisenstein:
Okay.
The Impact of Scarcity Beliefs On Giving
Mallory Erickson:
So these scarcity beliefs that sort of have defined a lot of how we operate in this sector have led to these then transactional norms that a lot of us have been taught either transparently or sometimes covertly that have driven our fundraising to solely focus on money or at least have tunnel vision around money.
So those can be anything from focus on the Rolodex to act like a car salesperson. And what does that mean? That means we want to get the money whether or not it’s really in the right interest of the donor, for example. And so in the book I talk about these five different transactional norms and what I’m saying though is that these are ways that a lot of us have been taught to fundraise. So if they ring true for that, that’s totally normal. And this isn’t about shaming people around using them. Everything in the book I talk about, this was me, this is how I was taught.
But those transactional ways of fundraising, they feel really bad to us as the fundraisers and they feel really bad to donors. And so in the book I talk about we’re seeing decline in financial giving to the sector and we’re seeing this staffing crisis, people leaving the sector in droves, really high turnover of fundraisers. I do not think that those are separate problems. I think they’re both being caused by this transactional way of fundraising that is burning fundraisers out and feeling bad and alienating donors.
Amy Eisenstein:
Yeah. I think you’re absolutely right. But the good news is that you see a path forward, don’t you?
How Fundraisers Can Handle Burnout Caused by Scarcity Mindset
So what do fundraisers who are caught in this downward spiral or this really stressful, difficult situation, living with chronic stress and burnout and all the things that are associated with high stress fundraising, what do we do about it? Let’s get to it.
Mallory Erickson:
Okay. So I have kind of good news and bad news. The good news is that the solutions are also the same. The solutions to improve our experience and how we feel in our bodies and our stress and our burnout, if we address those we also actually will see an increase in giving and fundraising because once that fundraising starts to feel better to us, it’s going to feel better to our donors too. And money moves in alignment and connection and real relationships.
5 Primary Components of Fundraising
And so, I mentioned these transactional ways of fundraising are leading to people leaving the sector in droves, but how is that happening? In the book, I talk about this decline in fundraising from discomfort to burnout, from discomfort to dysregulation to chronic stress, to burnout, that most fundraisers experience in one way or another. And I’ve been researching for the last few years the five primary components that I believe exist in fundraising, totally normally in fundraising, but are scientifically proven to lead to chronic stress and burnout.
- Rejection
- Uncertainty
- Power dynamics
- Pressure
- Isolation
We talk a lot in our sector about overwork and burnout. And I’m not saying rest is not important, but I think even if we had everybody working 30 hour weeks and never on the weekend and never on the evening, if we don’t recognize that these five elements of fundraising really impact our stress and our burnout, we actually won’t solve the underlying problem.
I know you were like, please talk about solutions and now I’m like more problems. But the reason that I’m doing that is because I think oftentimes we’re like, “Ooh, this strategy is the solution.” But then we apply more pressure to that fundraiser and we increase their stress, which gives them less capacity to use whatever solution it was that we thought we were providing to them.
So by doing things that actually help reduce stress in fundraisers, giving them tools to be able to manage stress more holistically, creating spaces where people can talk about how they feel, where they can express discomfort, where they can talk about in safe ways, different challenges, where they feel supported in that way. All of those things that we’ve talked about as, quote-unquote, soft skills or add-ons or whatever. My argument is that no, that is having a direct bottom line impact on that fundraiser’s ability to fundraise successfully, effectively.
And so if you want to see better fundraising outcomes, you have to start with holistic fundraiser support. And in the book I give a number of different kind of strategies, the way I talk about my entire coaching framework basically. And I really lay it all out there for folks along with a number of really immediate tools that they can start to use to down regulate their nervous system, be able to stay in action, bring more awareness into how they’re feeling at different points.
All of this is under something I’m calling alignment fundraising, once they have that inner alignment, then they can move into the second part of the solutions, which is around now that you have inner alignment, really ensure that your organization is looking for alignment with funders:
- How do you identify alignment for different types of funders?
- How do you identify the different assets that you and your organization have that align with those funders?
- And then how do you build connected relationships? So how do you really outreach to folks in ways that foster connection?
I talk a lot about the science of connection in the book and trust and what does it mean to really be building those types of real relationships that, again, feel good to us and are healing even to our nervous system and feel good to the donor. And so more money moves through those relationships.
Amy Eisenstein:
That’s so interesting.
Specific Tools for Feeling Anxious and Stressed
So I’m curious for an example of one of those tools that you were talking about to help people, I don’t remember the words you used, but sort of calm their nervous system I think is sort of what you were alluding to. So I’m curious about one of those tools.
I’ll give you a minute to think about it, and go back to something that I used to talk about a lot. There was a study, I think it was in the Harvard Business Review, the gist of it was that the researcher found this positive happiness loop. And that people who give to charity are happier. And what was it? What was the positive happiness loop? People who are happier give more. Oh, that’s what it is:
Happier people give more money and the more you give the happier you are and you’re in this positive happiness loop.
So, I don’t know. What you’re talking about sort of reminded me of that. And it is about mindset, I think.
It’s really hard once you’re in to change your mindset. That I think is the challenging part. But when somebody calls us to talk about a capital campaign, I know pretty quickly whether they’re going to be successful or not. And truthfully, it’s about whether they think they can or they think they can’t. When they come and tell me these are the 45 challenges and here’s why I don’t think we can, I tend to agree with them. And on the other hand, somebody honestly with sort of a similar donor situation might come and say:
“Well, we’re going to do it. We’re going to figure out a way. We have to do it. I’m open to learning. I’ll do whatever it takes.”
I’m like, oh, you have the same donors and generate the same dollars as the person that called an hour ago, but you’re going to do it and they’re not. I do. I think it comes down to mindset.
So give us one tool that you recommend that a donor who’s feeling anxious and stressed and potentially on the verge of burnout, because I think that that honestly is how most fundraisers and maybe people in the world are feeling these days — what’s one thing that we can do just maybe sitting at our desk?
Mallory Erickson:
Yeah, can I give you one brain one and one body one?
Amy Eisenstein:
Oh, yes.
Mallory Erickson:
Okay.
A Tool for Your Mind
So in the book I only do cognitive tools because it’s sort of too difficult primarily to do semantics in a book unless you go a lot deeper in a lot of different things. So from a cognitive perspective, truly the quickest, easiest thing you can do is acknowledge and validate how you feel and say to yourself, that makes sense. So you’re really just saying like, oh, you notice.
So it involves noticing resistance in your body, noticing fear showing up. And then instead of being like, “Oh, you should be better at this Mallory,” or, “You should know how to do this by now.” Instead you just say:
“Yeah, okay, I’m really nervous going into this donor meeting. It feels high stakes and I’m worried they won’t like everything I have to say. That makes sense.”
This is from the science of Britt Frank. She wrote this book called The Science of Stuck, and I can share a podcast link with her as well. But it’s truly throwing a bucket of cold water on a fire in your brain. It seems overly simplistic. But, acknowledging and validating is a really, really beneficial tool. So that’s one.
A Tool for Your Body
Then in terms of the semantics, so something in your body, one thing you can do and I’m going to give you one that you can do in the middle of any meeting as well. So put both your feet on the floor, if you are in a virtual meeting and you can be barefoot that’s even better.
Amy Eisenstein:
I’m doing it now. Feet on the floor, barefoot.
Mallory Erickson:
Feet on the floor. Close your eyes and just pay attention to how each of your feet is fully touching the ground.
- First, wind your consciousness around your right foot and notice if every corner, every area of that foot is touching the ground. Just make sure it’s fully in full contact.
- And then go to your left foot and do the same thing, sort of wind your consciousness around notice if every area, every toe is touching the ground.
- And just take a few deep breaths if you’re listening to this while you do that, really holding your consciousness in that place. That’s a really quick grounding exercise.
If you like that and you want to look up others, you can look up box breathing. You can look up something called five, four, three, two, one, which is noticing, looking at five things that you can see and four things you can hear and three things you can touch and two things you can taste.
All of these things help bring us into the present moment and they activate our parasympathetic nervous system. So when we’re stressed, our sympathetic nervous system is online. Sometimes we can use brain tools to help down-regulate and come out, and sometimes we need to use our body and activate our parasympathetic nervous system, which is our rest and digest function, to help reduce our stress in that moment.
Amy Eisenstein:
I love it. I feel like I’m literally and figuratively grounded right now with my feet on the floor. So I appreciate that. I really took the time to do it and I think it worked.
Making the Time to Take Care of Yourself as a Fundraiser
All right. So you provide all these new tools and presumably many fundraisers aren’t doing these things because they’re caught up in this hamster wheel of fundraising and every day is another fire. But, let’s say they read your book, what is their next step and what is holding fundraisers back from taking action? Maybe those aren’t two of the same things, so you can answer them separately.
But so a next step is reading your book obviously, and we’re going to tell them again the title and where to find it in just a minute. But what do you think is holding fundraisers back from trying to do some of these clearly urgent and necessary strategies to help them move forward?
Mallory Erickson:
I think we have a lot of myths that these are… Self-care has kind of gotten pigeon-fold in this bubble bath place. And really my hope is that… I don’t know that people feel the incentive to do it, and maybe they think that it’s too big. They’re like, “I don’t have time for that, Mallory. You haven’t seen my to-do list.”
And so my argument is that, no, I have seen your to-do list because I have had that exact same to-do list and I know what it feels like to not feel like you have time to take care of yourself or you will have time after you finish. And what I want people to really hear is your ability to tackle that to-do list, to do everything that you want, to realize your hopes and dreams for your organization, to raise the amount of money you need to raise requires you to pause. It requires a tiny moment of space and reflection and feeling your own feelings. You can do so many of these things from the comfort of your chair in the middle of another meeting.
And so I really want people to feel maybe a new sense of motivation to prioritize it, because a lot of times the reason we are not taking action is because we are stressed or afraid of whatever that action is. It’s very easy to say, “Oh, I didn’t have time to call that donor.” But, every time I speak, I’m like, how many people here have a few tasks on their task list that take two to five minutes but have maybe been sitting on that task list for a few weeks? And everybody kind of sheepishly raises their hand.
Amy Eisenstein:
Yes.
Mallory Erickson:
I’m like, is it possible that some of those are not about time, but perhaps they’re some of the most vulnerable and scary tasks on that list? And if this is true for you, if you’re listening to this and you’re like, “Oh, Mallory. Ouch.” One, totally normal. And two, that is exactly why these tools are so important. Because if you want to take action on those tasks, you can’t do it from a stressed out state because your body is in survival mode. And in survival mode, our body’s job is to shut down everything that doesn’t keep us safe and doesn’t conserve our energy, which means nothing vulnerable, risky, connected.
And so if we want to do those things as fundraisers, which we do, then we have to get out of that part of our brain to be able to do it.
Final Thoughts
Amy Eisenstein:
I think this is such an important conversation, especially for so many of our listeners who are either in capital campaigns or heading into capital campaigns, because getting your mental house in order before you head into a big fundraising effort like a capital campaign, I think is so critical. And sort of to slow down and assess what you’re doing and take stock of what’s going on and what the priorities are so that you’re not running around like a chicken with your head cut off. Because nobody wants to be in a place like that. Nobody wants to go to work like that every day. It doesn’t feel good.
And so how can we get back to why you got into fundraising and nonprofit work in the first place? Because you want to help people. Because you want to feel good. Because you want to do good work. And I think it’s really hard to do good work when you’re coming at it every day from a place of high stress and high anxiety, which ultimately is what’s happening. So I think this book is so important.
I just want to remind listeners that if you are heading into a capital campaign and you want a coach, a guide, a muse, not to reinvent the wheel, to bring down your stress level, I want you to call me, reach out to Capital Campaign Pro and see how we can help you, because actually we’re adding some new tools and resources and strategies and webinars on mindset because we know how important it is at Capital Campaigns.
And Mallory, tell people where they can find you and how they can get your new book.
Mallory Erickson:
Yes, if you go to MalloryErickson.com, you can see all of the different ways that I work with folks. If you go to MalloryErickson.com/book, you can get directly connected to all the places where books are sold and grab your copy, and let me know what you think.
And if you need, after you read the book, additional support on implementing what is inside of the book we’ve just started the Alignment Fundraising Collective, which is just a month to month really membership community for folks who really want to focus on alignment for fundraising. So you can check that out as well on my website, and I can’t wait to hear what you think.
Amy Eisenstein:
I love it. Thank you so much for joining me today, Mallory. I always learn something when I’m speaking with you. So thank you for sharing your wisdom and your calming presence with our listeners.
And listeners, we’ll see you next time.
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