Why Asking for Money Feels So Personal

The Psychology Behind Fundraising Discomfort — And What to Do About It

Why does asking for money feel so… personal?

In this episode, Erin explores the moment many fundraisers recognize: when a professional ask suddenly feels like something about you is on the line. Not strategic. Not neutral. Personal.

This isn’t a tactics problem—it’s a human one.

You’ll learn why the ask can trigger a sense of social risk, how identity and nervous system responses shape your experience, and what to do in the moment to stay grounded, present, and connected.

If you’ve ever avoided an ask, overthought it, or walked away feeling drained, this episode will help you understand why—and how to approach it differently.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

•  Why asking for money activates a sense of social risk 
•  How fight, flight, and freeze show up in fundraising 
•  The connection between identity, worth, and the ask 
•  Why burnout isn’t caused by the ask itself—but what it means to you 
•  Simple ways to regulate your nervous system before and during a conversation

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

✨ Stay Connected & Continue Your Fundraising Growth

Listen to all episodes + subscribe:
https://thebraveandbalancedfundraiser.buzzsprout.com

Join the community:
The Brave & Balanced Fundraiser Facebook Group
👉 https://www.facebook.com/groups/braveandbalancedfundraiser

Book a Brave & Balanced Breakthrough Call:
A personalized 1:1 session to support your inner clarity and fundraising wellbeing.
👉 https://calendly.com/vitalistcoaching/brave-balanced-breakthrough

Learn more about Erin’s coaching & nervous-system based support:
VitalistCoaching.com

Connect on Instagram:
@erinmcquadewright

Transcript

Speaker 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 McQuaid 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.

Erin McQuade-Wright 2:12

All right, friends. Today's episode is gonna get a little vulnerable. But who am I kidding? That's the whole point of this podcast in the first place. We talk about the vulnerable stuff about being human, where it might intersect with fundraising, and really how we can use it as a mirror to develop our internal skills rather than looking to the world for validation and a sense of our own wellbeing. We're getting practice here and putting in reps of doing that for ourselves, as my coach says, insourcing our own,"okayness," our own wellness first, going to ourselves to be the source of that okayness, and then offering what we wanna offer to the world, whether it's fundraising, whether it's business, whatever it is. First coming from a place of"I know how to make myself okay and I'm willing to listen to myself when I'm not okay. And, and accept that." So that's what we do here. It's not always the cleanest. Sometimes it's messy. And you know what? That's okay'cause that's being human. But today what I wanna talk about is making the ask, and that feeling that happens inside of you when you're about to ask somebody for money and it feels personal. Like if I didn't know any better, it would seem like I am asking for me, even though I know that I'm not asking for me. I'm asking for the mission that I am supporting here, my organization that I work for. You know, it's not necessarily a strategic feeling, it's not a professional feeling. It's a personal feeling. Like something about you is actually on the line in that conversation. And today I wanna talk about why this happens and what you can do about it. Maybe that's working for you. If it is, bless you, enjoy that. But if it's not working for you, or if you're anything like me and you started to notice that your body is really not here for that. If your body's starting to talk to you and say, this isn't sustainable, this rollercoaster ride of gut clenching or heart pounding, waiting for someone to give an answer to a request for a donation, can't be every day. Like, we gotta change something up here and do something about it. So when we ask someone to support our cause, what's actually happening? We're creating a social risk, and as long as humans have been around, we've needed to rely on each other, right? If you are in a good relationship with me, that means I can get fed. You can get fed. We look out for each other. So there's a really human and natural tendency to shy away from things that could cause that"social risk" to take place. Suddenly, if you see me differently, that could have the effect of destabilizing my own wellbeing, right? That's the feeling that happens on the inside. They might reject me. I might lose a connection here. And that triggers the feeling of: fight, which can show up like pushy energy, having an agenda, wanting to get something done. And guess what? The donor can feel that. That also might trigger flight, which is avoidance. I told the famous story of a university development department that have a sign on each desk of the fundraising team that says, outwardly,"this person should be out raising money." And this part of the sign facing that person who sits at that desk says,"I should be out raising money." So my question is, why would they need a sign like that? Why do they even need a sign that says,"I should be out raising money?""This person should be out raising money." It's because it's really common in fundraising to avoid making the ask. And nobody ever really told me that; that that was gonna be maybe the biggest thing that I came up against was my own internal story about what it means if I'm making the ask, what it means, if I'm avoiding the ask. And it really heartened me to hear that story that a famous university that did great on fundraising, hired the best people or whatever they, they had the resources to put into really great professionals, even they needed a reminder not to hide. so that natural avoidance of doing something that might cause a social risk and then freeze, it could trigger overthinking or rambling or"getting ready to get ready" to ask. I don't know if that sounds familiar to you. I remember one time I was sitting with a campaign committee about starting a new campaign, it was gonna be a really big campaign, bigger than we had done before and after a few different meetings where we were trying to get on the same page about what the case would be, the case for support, what the goal would be, who would be the main donors. I remember a board member complaining. And I remember him saying,"it seems like we're getting ready to get ready here." And of course, because that neural pathway had been so well worn over my lifetime, I immediately took it personally. I immediately took it as a personal attack. And the reason it hurt. The reason it always hurts when we're triggered is because there was a grain of truth to it. I was getting ready to get ready. For me to move forward, I had a belief that I needed my team, I needed my committee to be on the same page with me. I needed them to be clear that they were gonna be making asks in this campaign. Right? It's not one of those campaigns where the professional does all the asking. We were asking these folks to lean into their networks where they already had relationships and make asks. There, I felt like that was an important thing to get underway first. And I didn't feel at that moment like we were there yet. But he called us out as an organization for too much prep and not enough action. So there's a real balance to strike there for, for people to feel like they're on a winning team. We're moving forward and also getting on the same page about what this is that we're doing together. So your discomfort isn't a sign that you're doing it wrong. It's a sign that your nervous system thinks that something important is at stake. So fundraiser type people. People who work in nonprofits, people who work in helping professions are often that exactly. They're helpers by nature. They're highly attuned to others. They've got a spidey sense for when something doesn't feel right, for when something feels off. And they've been conditioned often to earn their worth through being needed by others. And guess what? That is not a bad thing that's a superpower in fundraising. It's like a spider on a web. Being able to feel the slightest tremor of something hitting that web is to say, oh, I'm, I'm in tune. I have a web of awareness around me. I can feel when something is not landing right with a potential donor and I can feel when it is. So that's a highly attuned to others sense, like a spidey sense, but it can tip and that was certainly the case sometimes for me. So when it tips, the ask goes from will you give to, do you value me or will you support this? Turns into am I enough? And your answer is gonna be a really big data point for whether I decide I'm enough or not. When your identity is tied to being helpful, asking for something back can feel like breaking an unspoken rule like I am meant to be helping you. Not to be asking if I think that asking is taking something from you that's gonna feel like a no go zone. That's gonna feel like danger, danger, danger. Don't cross this line. If I feel like that's what asking you for a donation is, I'm gonna avoid that. Talking about me personally, but if I feel, and this was also the case for me in other times in my fundraising career, if I feel like asking you to give is a gift that allows you to carry out a belief that you already have, which is that you are a generous person. Here's a way that you can put that belief into action that doesn't feel like taking to you, that feels like giving to you. So can you see how it's a different mindset? What you, the story you're telling yourself going into the ask really shows up in a moment like this, and it translates to the donor, but when you hesitate, when you feel like it's taking from them, you make fewer asks. Or you might have that nervous energy in your ask, which is overcompensating and coming across as pressure for the donor, or you might internalize the outcomes and, and feel like, oh, I'm not, I'm not good enough. I'm not doing this well enough. Let me push harder. And guess what? That's where the burnout comes in. That's where we get to that overwhelming statistic within fundraising, which is that. We're moving on within 16 to 24 months, we're moving on to another job'cause we feel like that job is too stressful. That job is asking too much. That job is undoable. I had someone reach out to me about a job posting for a fundraiser and they were looking for a director of development position. And they said, you know what? This isn't getting any traction. Can you take a look at it, Erin, and, and tell me why? And I said, sure. Send it over. And that ha, that job description had been out for maybe two or three months. They had had two people apply, which was a little strange. And both people pulled their applications and said, nevermind. So I was like, Hmm, I'm curious about this. And I read the job description and I, it became immediately clear to me why they weren't getting the response that they wanted to get. It was too much. It was too much work. It was so overwhelming. And I was putting myself in the shoes of a person reading this, and I said, there's no way. This is much more than 40 hours a week. This is nights and weekends. This is travel. This is creating a program that's never been done before. The organization was new. It was a heavy lift. And when I talked to this friend. About what I had seen in the job description, and I shared my feedback with him. We had an amazing conversation because it turned out that organization had. Some tremendous firepower behind it in terms of funds already raised. Prospects already identified a board that considered itself to be fundraisers and was already raising millions, but none of that found its way into the job description. So it looked like this is gonna be starting from scratch. You're gonna have to find all the prospects. You're gonna have to ask all the donors. You're gonna have to raise all the money, do it in short order. Without staff, without a team, just by yourself. And it turned out that that wasn't actually the case. That yes, the person was gonna have to build a program, but that there was real potential to this, that there were significant donations that had already been raised and donors that had already been identified. So when we talk about burnout, that's a real part of it, I think. This is what I was able to convey to my friend. You know, with the context of 16 to 24 months before fundraisers are changing jobs, you need to make the case as the organization, whether you think this is right or wrong, you need to make the case of why this is a good place to work and why you will see the applicant as a full human being, not just an ATM. People are looking for that. Now, that should be, in my opinion, part of any job description. You should say what the salary range is, and you should say that it's not all on your shoulders if that's a part of your culture. If you have a culture of philanthropy or you're even working toward that, you should be transparent about that in the job description. And I think when it comes to burnout, it's not the ask that burns people out. It's the meaning they make inside as a result of those conversations on the outside. It's the meaning we make of our results, what we think people think of us, if we're good or bad at our job. It's that internal stuff that causes the hurt. So this feels personal to you because your body thinks that the connection is at risk and connection is the most important thing that a fundraiser should care about, right? Not the money, but the connection, the relationships, building those relationships with people and cultivating those, taking good care of those relationships. And someday, yeah, it might turn into an ask. Also important to remember what to do about this. It's important to remember that their response is about them. It's not a verdict on you. There are a hundred factors that go into someone saying yes or no. And when we believe the sort of entrancing idea that this is about us, their yes is about us, or their no is about us or that, that we are a strong contributing factor to their yes or their no. It's just not a good place to be.'cause it can tip you. You know, if you're up one moment, you're down the next, and sure, you know, you might be like me, you might have had donor say, I give here because of you. And my challenge to you is to receive that with grace and put it immediately out of your mind because that can really lead you in the wrong direction. If you insert yourself in it, it's just there's, there's nothing good down that road. It can get confusing, it can get messy. So I want to bring you, like I do in every episode of this podcast, back to a regulated place. So before you make that ask, I want you to feel your feet on the ground. And do the physiological breath that Andrew Huberman talks about. Two inhales through the nose and one exhale through the mouth and make that exhale longer than the inhale. You can do this for 30 seconds and it just tells your nervous system. Hey, hey, we're okay. You may not even realize it, that you do this when you go to sleep. That is something that's natural to all bodies and it can bring you back to a regulated state before you make the ask and then notice what's in the room. If you've got tunnel vision and all you can see is. The five inches directly in front of you, that's a good indication that you are in fight or flight. Our peripheral vision opens up and we can actually see more of the room around us. We we're in a grounded state, so being in a room with a donor and taking a moment to look around to turn your head to the left and the right helps your body to say, we're okay here, orient to the room, and that brings more presence to the person in front of you. And guess what? That's what we all want. We want the person in front of us to be present with us, to know that they really see us. And if you're on the donor side, it really goes a long way. To feel like this development professional sees me as a person, that they're not just looking at me as a walking ATM, right? They are able to be present with me. This is why this work is the edge. It is the business edge for fundraisers, and I think it is an advantage. Those who can calm their nervous system while they're in conversation with a donor are going to be perceived by that donor or potential donor as a safe person that they can sit with, that they can be with. They're not gonna be running for the door'cause they're like, I just feel weird around this person. They're so anxious. Ask me how I know. That was my brand in fundraising, the anxious fundraiser. And just remember that the ask is offering an opportunity to them. It's a gift that you're offering to them. It's not asking for approval of you as as a person. So as I bring this episode to a close, I wanna just reflect to you that you're not asking for money, you're inviting someone into something that's meaningful. And the more you can stay connected to yourself in that moment, the less it's gonna feel like something is being taken from you. And the less it's gonna feel like you're taking something from the donor. You're gonna be less likely to walk away from that conversation and need a nap. You know, feel like, oh, I left my body, I don't even know what I said. Right. You're gonna be more stable. And you're gonna be more yourself. You're not gonna abandon yourself in that moment, and that coming back to yourself is always going to be the answer no matter what the situation is. Coming back to yourself is grounding your nervous system. So if asking for money has ever felt more personal than you expected, know that you're not alone and you're not broken. You're human and this is work you can learn to do differently. What if fundraising is a mirror for you to grow into the kind of person who can regulate their nervous system no matter what is happening, and donors feel really comfy around and they wanna give. What if that was your reality? Okay, here are your takeaways: Number one, your discomfort during the ask isn't a problem. It's your nervous system trying to protect connection. Number two, when asking feels personal, it's often because your identity is tied to being helpful. Number three, it's not the ask that burns fundraisers out. It's the meaning they make about themselves in the process. Number four. A donor's response is about them, not a verdict on you. And finally, number five, the most powerful shift. You're not asking for money. You're offering an opportunity.

25:20

Thanks for being here. I'll see you next time.