Are you giving money too much power in your fundraising efforts? Are desperation and scarcity sabotaging your fundraising success? 😣
You’re not alone, my friend. Many leaders try tactic after tactic, only to come up short again and again. Exhausting, right?
But what if the real barrier isn’t your savvy strategy, but your mindset? 💭
On this week’s episode of Nonprofit Lowdown, we’re diving deep into money mindset to discover how trauma and the stories we tell ourselves about money affect our fundraising for better or worse.
Here are a few of my takeaways:
🔑 Trauma and money experiences get encoded in our brains and bodies, affecting our fundraising mindsets and results
🔑 Attaching heavy emotion like desperation or scarcity to money activates our fight-or-flight response
🔑This traps us in survival mode rather than abundance – and donors feel that!
🔑By unpacking our money stories and shifting to an abundance mindset, our outer results can transform.
This is where the real work starts. We have to go inward to unearth our subsurface money narratives. What did your family say about money? What emotions come up when you fundraise? When you uncover the answers to these questions and shift your mindset, you’re going to see a huge transformation in your numbers too!
Ready to address inner blocks and finally hit your fundraising goals?
Important Links:
https://go.rheawong.com/money-quiz
https://go.rheawong.com/big-ask-gifts-program
Episode Transcript
RHEA
Hey you, it’s Rhea Wong. If you’re listening to Nonprofit Lowdown, 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 fun raising 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 rheawong.com now to sign up.
Welcome to Nonprofit Lowdown, I’m your host, Rhea Wong.
Hey, podcast listeners, Rhea Wong with you once again with Nonprofit Lowdown. This is another solo episode of Digging Them. So if you are too, shoot me an email. Let me know what you think, support at Rheawong. com. Anyway, I’m here today to talk about literally one of my most favorite topics of all time, money mindset.
And it’s interesting. Some of you might have heard me speak on this topic in other forums and other podcasts. My thinking on this continues to evolve. So this is what I’m thinking about right now. Again, it could change and likely will change as I learn more about it. But I’m going to talk about money mindset and why it is critical to your fund raising success.
What’s the connection? What is the relationship with safety? And how might our past affect our fundraising today? So in today’s episode, I’m going to refer a lot to things like trauma. I’m making reference to a lot of folks in the field, Dr. Paul Conti, who has done a lot of work on trauma, Dr. Gabor Mott and others that done significant work in trauma research.
And so what you’re going to learn from this episode is we’re going to talk a lot about the psychological aspects of fundraising. And then I’m going to give you some quick ideas or Tips about how you may go about both uncovering and shifting your money mindset. Now, something really interesting occurs to me before we jump into this, I work with a performance coach, Eugene, who has been on this podcast.
And Eugene said something that just really sticks in my mind. He says, it’s never the thing that happens to you. It’s your interpretation of the thing that happens to you. And so often, in our lives, we have experienced trauma. And I don’t care who you are, all of us have experienced trauma. I think this trauma is particularly pronounced in folks coming from BIPOC populations, or women, or anybody that doesn’t fit the so called norm.
Now, when I think about trauma, There are a couple of different ways to think about trauma. There is acute trauma, so that means any incident that may happen that is a one time acute thing. So say a car accident or say they were assaulted. The second kind of trauma is chronic trauma. It refers to, frankly, the soup that we swim in living in this country, right?
Racism, sexism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, et cetera, et cetera. All of the isms that we are exposed to, the fears that we have around violence, that we can’t necessarily just go to the grocery store without worrying about whether or not people will shoot us. That’s very traumatizing. And then the third is empathic trauma.
And for those of us that are in the helping professions, we also experience secondhand trauma from people that may have experienced firsthand trauma. And as healers, as helpers, we tend to absorb that trauma. So all to say that when we really consider all of the trauma that we may have in our lives, is it any wonder that we are coming from a place of needing some healing?
Now, when you have experienced trauma in your life, in an acute, chronic, Or empathic way, then there are other ways to think about trauma as well. So for those of us who come from populations that may have, whose ancestors may have been enslaved or oppressed in some way, there’s ancestral trauma. So we have what we call epigenetics, which is the genetic study of how our genes and DNA pass information on for you.
For example, they’ve shown that descendants of Holocaust survivors actually display negative health impacts. Based solely on the fact that they were descendants of Holocaust survivors, even though they themselves did not experience a traumatic event such as the Holocaust. So you’re literally, trauma can be passed down in your DNA.
So it’s ancestral trauma. The second is societal trauma. What we spoke about can be racism, sexism, etc. The third is relationship trauma. So that can be things that we’ve experienced from other people, things that we may have experienced from our caregivers. And the fourth is policy trauma. And so that refers to like political trauma or policies that have oppressed, like things like redlining and predatory lending practices.
So when we experience trauma, our brains Are in a state of survival. And so what that means in folks who experience trauma is that they’re the area around their amygdala tends to be a little bit more inflamed than in folks who have not experienced trauma. And what happens when your amygdala is inflamed?
Those of us have to try to remember like high school biology. The amygdala is a part of the brain that is responsible for fight, flight, or freeze. Back in the caveman days, when a saber toothed tiger was coming at us, our amygdala would be the thing to kick us into gear, or maybe we freeze and that our survival mechanism is to play dead.
The challenge that we have is that the hardware and the software have not been upgraded to life in 2024. And oftentimes, we will interpret things that are happening to us like an annoying thing that happened maybe my coffee is late, or I spilled my coffee, or my train is late, something like that.
We interpret it as a threat to our personhood. And this is particularly true if you have experienced trauma in your past. So your amygdala tends to be a little bit more reactive. Our nervous system then reacts, our adrenaline starts going, maybe our hearts start beating faster. are, we might be sweating because we are perceiving that the thing that is happening to us is a threat.
The opposite of survival, so our brains are only in one or two modes, survival or executive. Executive mode is when we are in When our prefrontal cortex, so that area right behind your forehead is working. When we’re in an executive state, that’s when we are what folks like to call the flow state. So if you’ve ever been in a situation where time has flown by, or you’re feeling super creative, or super in the flow, or in the zone, as they say, it’s likely that your prefrontal cortex, Has been activated.
Your prefrontal cortex also is responsible for creativity, for nuanced thinking, the amygdala is all about black and white thinking, your prefrontal cortex is where generosity lies in the world that we have constructed in 2024 in America. For many of us, Money equals survival. And so if we are coming from a place where we are perceiving money as being scarce or we’re never gonna have it, or we need to chase after it, we are going to put ourselves in a survival state because we are believing that money equals survival.
This is relevant because we have to ask ourselves what kind of state we are in when we are fundraising, if we are perceiving money. As the thing that is going to guarantee our survival, and in some ways it can if you have no money, you can’t pay for your staff, you can’t pay for the work. But when we attach this emotion onto money, we can tend to get a little bit desperate.
We can make money mean so many things. It can mean survival. It can mean stability. It can mean security. And so when we make money, meaning those things, we get into the mode of having to grasp, having to compete, having to call for it. Obviously this is relevant because we need to unpack the story of what money means to us back up for a second here.
I really believe that your success in fundraising is largely due to your mindset about it. So let me give you an example. When I was single many years ago before I was married, I was in these trying periods where I couldn’t catch a date to save my life. And the minute I was in a relationship, it seemed like everyone wanted my number.
Why is that? It’s because the energy that I was putting out in the world was not a desperate energy. It was an energy that was expansive, it was abundant, it was open, it was free flowing, it was relaxed. And I believe that if we can, as fundraisers, bring that kind of energy to the table, if we can actually believe that there is more than enough money out in the world for us.
And that is actually empirically true, especially for those of us living in the U. S. We are living in the richest time in human history, in the richest country in the world. So you can’t tell me that there isn’t enough money in the world to fund your work. We can say that distribution might be an issue, but we have to do it.
Be able to shift our narrative and to shift our perspective so that we can show up in a way that feels empowering for us and feels expansive and abundant. And it’s very hard to be expansive and abundant when you have these beliefs about money that feel disempowering or feel that you’re disempowering.
reinforcing a scarcity mindset. And I will say many of us have grown up in circumstances in which resources may have been scarce. So I want to be careful here. I’m not casting judgment or blame. You are perfect and whole. There’s literally nothing wrong with you. The ideas that you have, the beliefs that you have, the stories that you tell yourself about money or about anything else.
were born out of survival. They were born out of your circumstances. The challenge here is that we often then equate our external circumstances as a way to change our internal state. And so what that looks like sometimes is, Oh, when I’m, when I have a million dollars, when I have that new car, when I have that perfect boyfriend, I will be happy.
And so when we are constantly looking on the outside to validate the inside, we’re never going to be happy. Now we have to think about going from the inside out. How can I be happy in order for me to attract And pursue the things that I want from a full healed and healthy place. And so when we’re thinking about fundraising in particular, I want us to take a moment to really stop and examine the stories that we’re telling ourselves about money.
And again, I’m not here to judge you. If these are stories that you believe and you truly want to believe and more power to you. This is not about judgment. I am simply suggesting that you. Just take a little bit of a look at the stories that you do have. And if it serves you, then great. Vaya con Dios. And if it doesn’t, can you make a conscious choice about changing the story?
Now, the changing of the story is what we would call a top down approach in that we are actually changing the narrative in our brains. However, there is also the bottom up approach, which is especially when we’re coming from a place of trauma. A lot of times trauma can live in our body. And so how are we able to tap into our bodies to understand what our bodies are telling us about the emotion that they’re experiencing, whether it’s about money or anything else.
And so what I’d like to suggest to you is as you think about your role in the world as a fundraiser, what are the stories that you’re telling yourself about money? Here’s a fun thought experiment for you. Take a piece of paper, write down some reflections about this question. What did you hear in your family growing up about money?
So in my family, I always heard money doesn’t grow on trees. And who do you think we are? The Rockefellers of rich people are, they’re not like us. They’re different. What did you see in your family growing up? So in my family, my Parents had very different ideas about money. They were both very frugal, but then my father would randomly splurge on things, and then my mother would get upset with him, and so I had an almost bipolar sense of money.
Was it there to be spent, or was it there to be saved? And then, what emotions did you have? Do you remember regarding money? So in my family, the biggest fights I ever saw between my parents were about money. And so in my mind, I equated money with anxiety, with tension. And I remember specifically when I was eight years old, I grew up in San Francisco.
And then as now there were lots of unhoused folks in the streets. And I remember walking down the street with my dad once I was probably eight years old. And I saw this guy with a sign that said homeless vet, please help. And so he dug in my pocket. And I gave him a quarter and my dad whipped around me, yelled at me and said, Oh, so you’re so rich now you can just give money away.
And I felt shame. I remember feeling shame. I remember feeling that kid sense of, Oh, I’m in trouble. But I didn’t really know why, because in my mind I was doing the thing that Sesame Street had taught me to do, like sharing is caring. And it wasn’t until many years later that I realized that in my family, so even though my family was middle class, we never really wanted for anything.
However, my grandparents were immigrants from China who come to this country with 20 bucks in their pockets. And so in my family, money actually meant security, money meant stability. And because we had never challenged this narrative, any time that I was giving money away to someone else was actually a threat to my family’s security and stability.
And it wasn’t really until I understood that this was just my own family’s story, and it was very much wrapped up in a history of trauma and separation from a community, that I could, I didn’t understand why I never loved fundraising. In fact, I hated fundraising. Hated it. I would get my butterflies.
I would get all twisted up. I would do anything to avoid fundraising. Until I started to do it. And I started to really challenge this idea. Do other people hate giving money away? Because the thing is, in my mind, from my own trauma, my own personal experience, I was projecting that onto other people. I, and I, subconsciously, was believing.
That by asking people to give to my organization, I was a asking them to give of their own family’s stability and security and be that somehow they would also experience the shame that I had experienced when I gave money away. And it wasn’t really until I remembered that story and started to become aware of this narrative that I.
was able to start challenging it. Is that really true for other people? No. In fact, that wasn’t true for other people. In fact, there were people that I met in the world who actually thought of it as a privilege and a blessing to be able to give to causes that they love. And I started to challenge my own thinking.
And then I started to examine and interrogate, is this thing true? And if it’s not true, perhaps it is true for my family. Is this a thought that I want to continue holding? And so it is a challenge first to a, I’m going you believe, and a lot of times the things that we believe are very much grounded in the trauma that we’ve experienced, either or through other folks, and B, is it a story that serves me, and C, how can I make conscious efforts to rewrite the story.
So in our last couple minutes together, I just want to I’m going to talk through a couple of strategies that have been helpful to me. So I know this sounds so cheesy, but meditation has been incredibly helpful for me in terms of slowing down what the Buddhists call the monkey mind, right? Oftentimes there is a very short window between input and reaction.
Meditation helps to just crack that window a little bit wider so that Between stimulus and response, there can be a little bit of space so that you are responding instead of reacting. I found that to be incredibly helpful. The second thing is journaling, right? A lot of times, we have these beliefs, we don’t know why we have these beliefs, often these beliefs keep us tied to a certain identity, or they keep us tied to a community, or they keep us tied to a sense of safety, right?
As human beings, as a species, it can be dangerous to A, not be part of a group, or B, to Think something different than the rest of your tribe, because that is when Sabertooth Tigers can come, or maybe that’s when you eat the poisonous plant, right? So from a survival standpoint, it makes a lot of sense.
However, life in 2020 is different than it was when we were in treatment. And the question I have for you is, what are these beliefs doing for me? And is this a belief I want to continue to have and if it is not what you can do is journal about it and be conscious and think about monitoring your own brain around.
Is this a thought that shows me how am I letting this thought dictate my behaviors, right? So let’s say for example, my belief is money is scarce and I’m never going to have enough of it. This will then create it. An emotional reaction in my brain of scarcity, competition, getting really transactional. And then it will make me behave in ways that reflect the fear that I have, that I’m never going to get enough, right?
Maybe I start to see people as. I don’t know if it’s just walking cat bugs and not just people, maybe I start to grimp and save in ways that don’t really make a lot of sense. And then the outcome may be that maybe I will save money, but is it an outcome that I really want? Is it an outcome that is meaningful?
And again, I just want to be very clear here, I’m not saying you should not be conscious of money. I’m not saying you should spend money willy nilly. That’s not what I’m saying. What I’m saying is, can we be mindful stewards of money? Can we use money in the way that it’s intended to further our mission and to bring that we need to change the world?
Can we do so without the emotion that we put on money? Money is just, it’s an inanimate object. We, it’s us that have made it mean so much. And if we can unpack for ourselves what you have made it mean, if you can de emotionalize it, and really approach it as, this is a resource, and by the way, it’s a renewable resource.
Time is not a renewable resource, but money is. This is a renewable resource. It is a tool that we can use in order to further the mission and change the world. How might that be different for you? How might you be different if you were able to take the emotional heft out of money? How might you be different as a fundraiser?
If your value as a fundraiser was not whether you got the gift or didn’t get the gift, right? Oftentimes we tell ourselves stories that if I get the gift, I’m a good fundraiser. If I don’t get the gift, I’m a bad fundraiser. The truth of the matter is the outcome is actually not up to you. People are going to give or they’re not going to give.
And what they decide to do is literally not up to you unless somehow you have mastered the art of mind control, in which case you should definitely call me because I want to learn. But what you have control over is did you set everything up the right way? Were you able to do all the things that you could do within your own realm of control to the best of your ability?
That is, did you cultivate properly? Did you solicit properly? Did you set it up the right way? And if you did, how can we Be unattached to the outcome because the outcome is not up to you. And in fact, can we call the win the fact that you made the ask? That is the win. So there’s a lot here. There’s a lot to unpack.
A lot of us have trauma and stories that do not serve us anymore. And I am simply suggesting, and I’m not coming from a place of deficit, right? I think everyone out here is whole and perfect. And that whatever you did in order to survive is what you needed to do in order to survive. And I am suggesting that you have survived.
Good job. And maybe you are in a place where you can upgrade or revise or rewrite these narratives that may have helped you up to a certain point but might not be serving you anymore. And if they are serving you, they’re continuing to serve you, like right on. Good for you. I have been on this journey because When I was learning how to fundraise as a little baby ED, I found so much of the information that I was learning was largely tactical.
It was largely strategic and interesting, like how to write a grant proposal, how to write an annual report. Like all of this information is out here. But I remember once talking to a master fundraiser who said to me, it’s you that are putting up the blocks around fundraising. It’s you that, is blocking the energy.
And I was so confused. I didn’t understand what that meant, right? And it wasn’t really until I started doing a lot of inner work that I realized what that really meant. And then I also recognized that once I started to do the work, once I started to unpack these stories, once I started to believe different things about the world and about abundance and about what was possible, then That’s when the money really started to flow for me.
And it wasn’t that I was working any harder. It wasn’t that I was doing anything differently. It was that I had freed myself from these stories that did not serve me anymore. And the thing I just want to add here before I sign off is that when we think about the nature of abundance, we have to remember that nature is abundant.
The rule of the universe is abundant. When we look at all of the stars in the sky, And the grains of sand on the beach or the drops of water in the ocean is a world of abundance. The leaves in the trees. And so it is our nature because we are part of nature to be abundant. And it’s these stories and these constructs and these traumas that have gotten us to a place where we feel so Alone and scarce, and that we are grappling against each other and competition to survive.
But that’s an old story. If we can actually get ourselves to a place where we deeply believe in abundance, and we train ourselves to look for the abundance, and we recognize that we are interconnected, that our survival isn’t meshed together and that there’s more than enough for all of us out there, then we’re playing a different game.
So if this is resonating with you, I recommend checking out a quiz that I put in the show notes so you can check it out there. And then also I would be remiss if I didn’t tell you that if this is resonating with you, this is a lot of what we talk about in my program. Big ask gifts. The next session is starting in June.
And so if you’re interested, check it out on my website, Rheawong. com. Apply today and hope to see you in the program.
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