The Brave and Balanced Fundraiser
The Brave and Balanced Fundraiser is the podcast I wish had existed during my 15 years in fundraising. It’s a love offering to the people behind the mission—the professional fundraisers who give their hearts and energy every day to make the world better.
This show isn’t about strategy, metrics, or money. It’s about you—the human being doing the work. Each episode offers real tools and soulful conversations to help you regulate your nervous system, reconnect with your purpose, and renew your energy so you can lead with clarity, compassion, and courage.
If you’ve ever felt stretched thin, overworked, or caught in the constant pressure to perform, this podcast is your invitation to return home to yourself. Join me to learn how to cultivate balance, resilience, and authentic impact—from the inside out.
Full Episode Transcript: https://share.descript.com/view/fkFZpmNYF3v
The Brave and Balanced Fundraiser
Why Fundraisers Burn Out: The Hidden Pattern No One Talks About
Understanding the emotional cost of fundraising—and why it’s not your fault.
📘 Episode Summary
Why do fundraisers leave their jobs every 16–24 months? In this episode, Erin reveals the hidden pattern driving burnout: the chronic under-resourcing of the fundraiser’s inner life.
Erin shares how rising goals, shifting funders, and donor pressure interact with deeper, often unconscious beliefs about money, worthiness, and belonging. You'll learn why fundraising can mirror old patterns from our past—and why understanding this brings relief, power, and choice.
If you’ve ever felt behind, not enough, or excluded from decisions that shape your goals, this episode will help you recognize: it’s not personal, and it’s not your fault.
💡 Key Takeaways
- Burnout is systemic, not a personal flaw.
- Fundraising has an outer story (goals, pressure) and an inner story (anxiety, inadequacy).
- Old money patterns can replay in donor work without us realizing it.
- Patterns are not identities—they can shift with awareness.
- Your first act of power is simply noticing the pattern.
📝 Journal Prompt
What might change if you believed your worth wasn’t tied to your numbers?
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@erinmcquadewright
Welcome to the Brave and Balanced Fundraiser, the podcast I wish I'd had during my 15 years as a professional fundraiser. I'm your host, Erin McQuade Wright. This is your space to breathe, realign, and reconnect with a part of you that chose this work for a reason. Together we'll explore tools and practices that help you show up less stressed and spread thin and more grounded, brave, and on purpose. I'm so glad you're here. Let's get started. Today we're exploring something most fundraisers know very well, but rarely talk about why fundraisers leave their jobs every 16 to 24 months, and what that reveals about the emotional landscape of our profession. If your work feels meaningful and exhausting, and if you feel pressure from goals that you didn't set, if you wonder whether you're the only one who feels this way, this is for you. The pattern that we're naming is chronic under resourcing of the fundraiser's inner world. I know there are plenty of resources out there for how to raise more and how to do it with less, but we're not having enough conversations about what's going on inside. What's the story you're telling yourself as you raise money? On the outside, it looks like the goals are increasing. Of course, starting from zero every January or whenever your fiscal year starts, there's pressure to always do more funding sources that have been there for years, in some cases, decades going away, and that sort of being dropped in your lap. We need to move in a new way. The old paradigm falling away and a new type of fundraising on the horizon. And then donor relationship stress as well as pressure to always do more. And internally that can feel like anxiety, stress and pressure inadequacy, and a constant sense of not doing enough. And this leads to the burnout and turnover that we're seeing in our sector. I remember a year when I decided that I was going to have some say so in my fundraising goal, and I remember going to the head of finance and saying, Hey, I'd really like to be in on this conversation. And he. Was very kind. He was very, um, conciliatory. Said, sure, sure we can, we can have that conversation. Let's talk about it. But we never did. And I realized after a few conversations like this that I was being put off and that was not unique to that workplace, I found that I would be talking with the president or CEO or CFO about it. It, and it was all well and good in that room, but then somehow the actual conversations about when the rubber met the road about what the fundraising goal was gonna be, I wasn't involved in those conversations and that number would be given to me either in a board meeting as part of the budget for the upcoming year or in a staff meeting, and it just felt really disempowering. It felt like, no, no, you don't get to be a decision maker. You have to just go raise the money, and by the way, you could put a smile on your face about it. It's just what it felt like. That's the interpretation I had about that. And so the question is, what pattern in my life did that reflect? What did that resemble, what was it? What was familiar about that pattern? To me, and for me, it was a pattern of growing up, like, you don't need to know about money. Don't ask about things you don't need to know about. That was a pattern in my family of origin, just about, you know, the comfort level with money and talking about money was not there. And so I learned early that I didn't get to be at the table when that conversation was happening. So fast forward to my fundraising career, there was a part of me on an unconscious level that was like, Nope. Yep, this sounds right. I don't get to be at the table. Even though I was frustrated on the outside, there was a part that believed that that was true. So this is what I mean when I say we can use fundraising as a mirror to see what's coming up for us to be healed. And for me, that pattern was a big one that needed to be healed. When it comes to money, I don't get to be at the table. And this really isn't a personal failing. It's a pattern. And when we judge our patterns and say, I shouldn't feel that way, I gotta get out of that, then we're hooked by the pattern. It's for sure not going anywhere when we judge it or when we believe that that pattern is us. I am a person who. Gets the goal handed to her. I am a person who doesn't get to be in the room about money. That's identifying with it and judging it is, I shouldn't be like this. I shouldn't have that thought. I shouldn't have that feeling. If you're doing either one of those, congratulations, your pattern is sticking around and so it's just feedback that this is, this is a pattern I've got, and when we meet these things actually with acceptance, they become less urgent patterns for us to follow. They kind of fall away on their own when we are able to fully accept them without an agenda that they go away. So I want you to know that if you've got this pattern or if you've got a pattern where you feel like you're not enough or you're not doing enough, I want you to spend this week simply noticing those moments when you feel behind or not enough. Don't fix anything. Just witness the pattern, because when we see that there is a pattern happening, the pattern doesn't own us. It's not leading us around by the nose when we can see, oh, there's a pattern. There it is. There's that familiar story that I'm not enough or I don't get to be at the table. When we're talking about money, so just to close the loop, I want to reflect to you that you're not alone and you're not broken. You're living inside a system that hasn't yet learned to care for the inner life of fundraisers. And guess what? The good news is about that, my friend? You get to be that change. I get to be that change. Caring for our inner life is, is our job. It's our work to do. We are responsible for our emotions, we are responsible for our patterns, and we don't have to wait for anyone to give us that focus on the inner life of the fundraiser. We get to do that ourselves. So I wanna ask you a question. And I want you to really think about this one and maybe take it to your journal if you're a journaler. What might change if you believed your worth wasn't tied to your numbers? What might change for you, if you believed your worth wasn't tied to your numbers, what would you be capable of? As we close out today, I wanna highlight a few key takeaways that you can carry with you. First. This is not you being bad at your job, it's a systemic pattern, what we're calling the fundraiser shuffle. Of turnover in our profession is rooted in chronic under resourcing of the inner life of fundraisers. You're feeling exhausted or behind isn't a personal flaw. It's a sign that the system has never been built to care for your nervous system. Second, there's always an outer story and an inner story. On the outside it looks like. Goals being handed to you starting from zero every year, et cetera, et cetera. On the inside, it feels like anxiety, pressure, inadequacy, and never enough. Both are real, but the inner story is usually the one quietly running the show, and the good news is you have the ability to change your inner story. Third, fundraising is a mirror for older money patterns not being invited to the table around budgets or goals echoed an old story from my family of origin. And many of us are replaying those early messages in our fundraising roles without realizing it. So just realizing it is the medicine. Fourth, a pattern is not your identity. I don't get to be in the room about money is a pattern. I'm a person who never gets to be in the room about money is an identity. When we judge the pattern, I shouldn't feel this way or fuse with it. This is just who I am. It locks in. When we meet it with acceptance and curiosity, it starts to loosen its grip. Fifth, awareness is your first act of power. You don't have to fix anything right now. Your only job is to notice. Notice when quote, I'm behind or quote. I'm not enough Shows up. Notice when you feel like you don't get to be at the table. The moment you can say, oh, there's that pattern. You are no longer being led around by it. So I'll leave you again with this question because it's a big one: what might change if you believed your worth wasn't tied to your numbers? If you wanna keep unpacking this, come share your reflections in the Brave and Balanced Fundraiser Facebook group. You don't have to navigate these patterns alone. Thanks for being here with me today. Take a breath, unc unclench your jaw, and I'll see you in the next episode.