Fundraising Resilience: What Are You Making It Mean?

How donor “no’s,” board scrutiny, and grant rejections shape your nervous system—and how to build real resilience from the inside out.

Fundraising is a profession built on exposure to rejection. Donors decline. Boards stress-test your plans. Grants fall through. Finance departments stay cautious. None of this is unusual—but what you make it mean about you can quietly erode your confidence over time.

In this episode of The Brave & Balanced Fundraiser, Erin explores the hidden nervous system impact of repeated “failures to be perfect” and why resilience in fundraising isn’t about grit—it’s about recovery.

You’ll learn:

• Why personalization is the biggest threat to fundraising resilience
• The cumulative nervous system effect of repeated rejection
• How to tell if you’re becoming more resilient—or more reactive
• Why resilience cannot be outsourced to donor behavior
• Proven, research-backed tools to build internal steadiness

This episode includes practical reframing questions, a 90-second emotional processing tool, and simple nervous system resets you can use immediately after setbacks.

Journal Prompt:
What am I making this mean about me?

If you want support strengthening your resilience and leading from clarity instead of bracing, you’re invited to explore working with Erin. You’ll find the link in the show notes.

Book your 1:1 Brave and Balanced Breakthrough Coaching Session here: https://calendly.com/vitalistcoaching/brave-balanced-breakthrough

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Transcript

Erin McQuade-Wright 1:33

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. In today's episode, you're gonna learn how to stop internalizing every donor"no," every board question, every grant rejection as a commentary on your competence, and you're gonna start building real fundraising resilience instead. I will show you how"meaning making" shapes your nervous system, how to tell if you're becoming more resilient or less, and the practical tools that can help you recover faster and lead with steadiness. This is one to share with your fundraising bestie today. If they need some help with that internal steadiness. We're gonna get into it right now. I wanna talk about something today that we don't name enough in fundraising. It's the quiet accumulation of no, or the collection of nos that you build up over a number of years in fundraising, and that might look like the donor who declines to give. The board that wants to stress test your development plan, the finance colleagues that say, well, that pledge isn't real until the money hits the bank, so I don't join you in celebrating the win of a big pledge coming in. You know, none of these are catastrophic knows, but over time. They have the ability to have an effect on you. Ask me how I know. So today we're talking about fundraising resilience. And I don't mean like the hustle, the grit, or the try harder. We're talking about nervous system resilience. And before we analyze anything, I want you to know if you've been feeling more thin skinned lately. More reactive or snappish, more tired. You aren't weak. You're likely conditioned. We're gonna unpack that today. So what do you make it mean about you when the donor says no, do you make it mean I'm losing my edge? They said yes before, but no, this time. So what am I doing wrong? Or what about when the board pushes back? Do you make it mean they don't trust me? If you don't get the grant, ugh, I should have written it better. Or if the donor declines a meeting, I do. You make that mean I must not matter to them. Our organization must not matter to them. Or the example I mentioned earlier, finance tempers your excitement and they say, well, you can't, I'm not gonna count a pledge'cause it's not in the door yet. You know what? Finance, finance is financing. Do you make that mean I look like an idiot?'cause I'm not seeing this the way they do because I went in with a happy pretty balloon. Of a donor saying yes to our campaign and making a pledge, and my finance colleague popped it. So here's the distinction that I want you to think about today in this conversation. The event itself is neutral. The meaning. That you make of it is what lands in your nervous system. And I promise you, I'm not trying to gaslight you. If somebody tells you that the sky is green and you know it's not green, that won't trigger you or upset you. I, but if they tell you, I once had a finance person tell me, put on your big girl pants and go do that, y'all. I was hot. I was hot, but the reason that triggered me is because there was a part of me that was insecure about my job, how I was doing my job, and boy, when he poked at me in that way, it was like a slap on a sunburn. I really reacted. Not in the moment. But I did go back and say, you will never speak to me that way again. That's where I was at the time. But I, I'm proud of myself for showing up for myself in that moment, in the, in the revisiting it moment, and he respected that boundary. So if the event is neutral. And the meaning that we make of it is what lands in the nervous system. How do we untangle the event from our identity, the outcome from our worth? Those are separate, and when those moments happen, they sting and when they happen repeatedly and you interpret each one as a commentary on your competence, your nervous system adapts. And if you have a long career. In fundraising that can have a cumulative effect. So when your nervous system adapts to that, that adaptation can look like more hesitation, more bracing, finding other things to do except making the ask, getting, allowing yourself to be distracted by other things. Doing the smaller things on your to-do list. Doing the the downhill tasks instead of the uphill tasks that are really gonna move the needle for your goals. The stuff that you're gonna be, your performance is gonna be measured on. That could show, that adaptation could show up as I'm gonna make this ask smaller, I'm gonna over explain. I'm gonna talk over the donor rather than letting them say, yeah, we wanna give, it could turn into less, less risk tolerance and longer just rumination. I'm thinking about taking action rather than taking action. And you know, here's the reality. One no is data 50 nos. If we make it personal, that becomes what we call identity erosion. Over time, you don't just feel disappointed. You start bracing before the I, before the email even opens. And that's not weakness, that's conditioning and it's happening on a nervous system level. I, so I remember, okay, I was working for an organization. I was heading up a small development team and there was a need, an increased need that's happened suddenly in the middle of the year. So my goal jumped and I was asked by a board member in a board meeting. Right. You know, a board meeting is usually very well prepared. It's. At least in the organization that I was working in at the time, it scripted, the staff knows exactly what's gonna happen when, who's gonna talk when. And there was a little blank space there for board member questions and a board member asked me in front of everyone if I could create a report that would show the trends over time. Of how the fundraising was doing over a period of years in this organization. Now, that wasn't something I knew how to do, but I had enough skill in Excel that I could figure it out. I knew I could figure it out, but what did I make it mean about myself that he was asking that I did not make it mean? That he was trying to help me because he knew the trends were going in the right direction, and he wanted to be able to sing my praises. By seeing that report, I didn't make it mean that I made it mean that I was having a dental exam all of a sudden in front of everyone, and I had this board member looking in my mouth going, oh, why are your teeth like this? It felt very personal. It felt very vulnerable. And that's an example of a simple request that I heaped meaning on top of. And I came to the conclusion that I was failing. So you add that story to not getting the grant a few, multiple tens of times. Donors asking a hard question. On the surface, I stayed composed, but inside my chest was tight. In that meeting, I over-prepared, and then when I went home, I replayed those conversations. Here's what I should have said. Oh man, I wish I had said this. Why didn't I just say this? So by doing that, I was extending the stress of that moment in the board meeting. And bringing it home with me, unpacking it in the middle of my bed, like an unwelcome guest and just allowing it to take me right down the rabbit hole. So it's the meaning that I assign to it, not the pushback, the meaning and the the continuing to worry about it is what exhausted me. So noticing how long I was carrying the emotional residue of each setback, whew. I realized that resilience isn't about how often you're told no. It's about how long your nervous system stays activated after, because let's be real. If you are not getting nos, you're not asking enough. I will never forget this coach that I learned from who absolutely changed my life. She is such a badass. She's so successful. People sign up for her program and just wanna work with her, and she's an influencer on, on Instagram. She's one of those people. Who is really bringing a spirit of calm and grounding to the world. I really believe that You can look up her podcast. It's called The Healing and Human Potential Podcast, and my coach is the host. Her name is Alyssa Noga. But seeing how successful, successful she was and how. Much business she did in the, in the area of helping to raise the world's consciousness and bring more nervous system regulation and compassion into the world. It really surprised me to hear about her getting nos and she really normalized that for me. Like, oh yeah, you're supposed to be getting nos to get this many yeses. Do you know how many nos I had to get? To go through, but I didn't really get that advice when I was in fundraising. And so I just expected the yeses, and when the nos added up and I was attaching meaning to that, it really hurt. So the goal isn't to be invulnerable like, rah ha ha ha, you say no, and it just bounces off of me like a bullet off of Wonder Woman's cuffs. No. It is not invulnerable to be resilient. It's how quickly you recover and how you, the tools you have, how you're able to bring yourself back to a place of balance and give that no proper context. So donors will say no. They will change their priorities. They will ghost you and delay and play out. The conversations longer than you might think they need to. They'll negotiate and boards will scrutinize. That's their job. Finance will will be cautious. That's exactly who is hired to be a finance person. They are cautious people who are most likely not singing from the rooftops when a pledge comes in. They're just not. Volatility is built into fundraising, and if your stability depends on constant validation from the outside, you will burn out. I did that. Your steadiness the Jedi move is to generate your steadiness internally, regardless of the circumstances around you. And when you can do that, that is the game changer. In fundraising because you are able to take the action of making the ask and you're able to detach from the answer that you get, the rejection, it's not about you. That is the Jedi move, and one of the ways you can do that is you can use the power of your mind. Right, the power of your mind. Your mind is going to find evidence of whatever you believe. So if you believe I'm failing, your mind will find evidence of that, but you can use your mind to question and reframe those beliefs. I'm failing. What? What else could this mean? What is, how could this be neutral? What is actually in my control. I can't control another adult. I cannot, I cannot make them say yes when they are meaning, no, I can't do that. So you can separate the strategy feedback from your identity. I experienced a no is very different in the body from I'm not good enough. I wasn't good enough to get a yes. So can you see how those feel different? I experienced a no today versus I'm not good enough and I got a no as a result, and neuroscience is all over this. It has shown us that when we really allow ourselves to fully feel a feeling. And if you're like me, you might have built up decades of avoiding feeling a feeling running from it, trying not to look at it, thinking that that pushing it down and pushing it inside of a closet and closing the door was a kindness that you were doing to yourself. I'm here to tell you, it is not a kindness when we are able to fully feel our feeling. And allow it to move through our body. It takes about 90 seconds for it to dissipate. To name it, ah, rejection is here. Let me see if I can sit with this. It feels like a big lead ball in the middle of my belly. Okay, let me just put my attention on it. And hit mute on the remote in terms of what the story is and just feel the feeling because what we resist persists, those resisted emotions amplify. But when we experience them, instead of resist them, they metabolize our nervous system is like, I got this 90 seconds. Boop moves on through and you call back a little bit of your energy to yourself. You reclaim a little bit of your life force every time you do that. And that fundraiser who is able to get themselves back into balance after a rejection is going to raise more money.'cause they're not gonna, it's not gonna hurt so much. Each No is gonna lead them to their next. Yes. Okay, I got a no. That means my next yes is coming rather than taking it personally. So in order to reset the nervous system, how do we practically do this? I'm gonna give you a really clear and easy tool, and you're gonna probably look funny at your phone or wherever you're listening to this'cause it's gonna sound too simple. To be effective, but I'm here to tell you it's ex, it's exceedingly effective. I want you to take a breath in through the nose, and then I want you to breathe out like you're breathing through a straw with your lips together, and make that exhale longer than the inhale. That's it. Extend the exhale nice and slow and even, and doing that tells your body we're safe. You can do that in a meeting. You can do that in your car. You can do that after the meeting where you're processing what happened. Your breath is the most available tool at your fingertips for bringing yourself back into balance. Taking a brief walk outside, putting your feet on the floor. Even better if you live in a part of the world where there's grass that you can put your feet in even better, or a beach that you can put your feet on Making contact. With the Earth allows you to discharge some of those stress hormones that are running rampant around your body and making you feel jangly. You can journal immediately after you get a no. The idea is to get your thoughts out rather than keeping them in and stuffing them down. These are not indulgences. They are sustainability tools and they're important for you to have in your toolkit'cause this stuff does add up if you're not paying attention to it. So after, I wanna give you an experiment, just try it out after your next setback and it will come. Notice how long it takes you to recover. And you can journal. You can ask the question, what am I making this mean? What am I making this mean about myself? Because I don't know about you. But I had a pretty nasty inner monologue. I was pretty unkind to myself. And I did that on purpose. It wasn't on a cognitive level, but I did that on purpose because I felt like if I was mean to myself, then it wouldn't hurt so bad if someone else was mean to me. They couldn't say a thing that I hadn't already thought about myself. So it was a safety strategy. I'll be safe from other people hurting me if I'm mean to myself first. But that is a really corrosive strategy. I tried it out so you don't have to, you can let that go if you're, if you're holding onto that, it might be that, that pattern, because you're listening to this podcast, it might be that, that, that pattern of being mean to yourself, so it won't hurt if others are mean to you. It might be that that pattern is coming up for healing. It's like, okay, I'm ready to go now. If you're ready to let go of it, this might be the time, and I want you to either take it to a brief meditation, thinking about how long is it taking me to recover? Okay, what are the stories I'm telling myself? What am I making this mean? And do that before you respond to any of the follow-up emails or the next steps. And I know it can feel like you're doing yourself a kindness. If you rush right past the feeling of rejection to do the next action, it can feel like, well, I'm not gonna linger on this bad feeling. Let me get to a better feeling. Let me get to, you know, maybe the next Yes. But I promise you, you are passing over gold when you rush to the next thing. When you're able to sit with the feeling that you don't wanna feel, that feeling gets less powerful and it's not running you or hijacking you, you're just able to feel it and your nervous system can process it and move on. So the question is, over your career, however long it's been in fundraising, whether it's been one week, 10 years, or more, I want you to think about those nos, the board questions, the financial caution. What do you think they're doing to your nervous system? Would you say that you are becoming sharper or smaller? And if you've felt smaller lately, that doesn't mean you're failing. It means you're nervous. System has been carrying unprocessed meaning resilience. It isn't built from the outside in. It's built quietly, internally, repeatedly. This is something that you do for yourself. Nobody else can do it for you. And if nobody ever told you this in fundraising, let me be the one to tell you. You're not supposed to be perfect. You're supposed to be adaptable, and adaptability is trainable. You can learn that. If you'd like support building this kind of internal steadiness, so your leadership and your fundraising are powered by clarity rather than bracing and anxiety, you're welcome to explore working with me. The link is in the show notes. No pressure, just invitation. I hope this episode was helpful to you. Here are your takeaways: number one, resilience is not toughness. It's recovery speed. The goal isn't to avoid disappointment altogether. It's to shorten how long it hijacks your nervous system. Number two, events are neutral. Meaning is powerful. What you make a donors know mean about you determines whether it becomes data or damage. Number three, repeated personalization rewires your nervous system. Over time, unexamined setbacks shrink your risk tolerance, your creativity, and your confidence. Number four, resilience is an inside job. Donors will always say no, boards will always scrutinize. Stability must be internally generated, and that is the Jedi mind trick number five. You can train adaptability. One pause, one reframe, one regulating action instead of catastrophizing. That's how sustainable fundraising careers are built. You don't need thicker skin. You need a steadier nervous system. Thanks for being here today. I'll see you next time.