You’re Walking Past Money Every Day (Here’s Why)

The hidden filter that’s keeping you from seeing opportunity right in front of you

If you’re not raising the money you want, what if the issue isn’t effort—but awareness?

In this episode, Erin McQuade-Wright explores a powerful (and often invisible) truth: you may be walking past opportunities every single day—not because they aren’t there, but because your brain is filtering them out.

Drawing on a simple but eye-opening story from her own life, Erin breaks down how your mind prioritizes safety, familiarity, and identity over possibility—and how that directly impacts your ability to see and act on fundraising opportunities.

From avoiding follow-ups to deciding a donor “isn’t ready,” many of the choices we make aren’t based on facts—they’re based on internal filters designed to protect us from discomfort, rejection, or risk.

And every time you obey that filter, you may be leaving money on the table.

This episode will help you recognize where this is happening in your own work—and give you a simple, grounded way to start shifting it today.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

•  Why you’re not actually missing opportunities—you’re filtering them out 
•  How your brain’s need for safety impacts your fundraising decisions 
•  The subtle ways avoidance shows up (and how it costs you money) 
•  Why waiting until something feels “ready” keeps you stuck 
•  A simple, body-based practice to help you take action with more ease 

A moment to reflect:

What am I not allowing myself to see?

Ready to go deeper?

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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 the 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. If you're not raising the money you want, what if the issue isn't effort but awareness? In this episode, I'm gonna show you how to identify one opportunity that you've been missing and what you can do about it. Let's dive in. our brain is designed to filter our reality, and this doesn't just go for hiking trails, it goes for opportunities. The Baader-Meinhof frequency illusion is a term you might have heard about, and if you haven't heard of the term, you might know it as when you're shopping for a car and you really like this blue car and you're about to buy it, suddenly you see that car everywhere. You see that blue car everywhere you look. Suddenly, your filter has changed, right? It was... It's not that everybody is suddenly driving this blue car, it's that you didn't see it before, and now you do. It's a frequency illusion. So once you put your attention on something, you start to see evidence of that everywhere you look. So our brain is really cool in this way. It's designed to filter reality, and it shows you what you already are looking for, and it filters in terms of safe, what's safe, what's familiar, and what's aligned with your identity. So let's take this through a fundraising filter. You don't necessarily see the donor Who would say yes if you ask them, or the relationship that could deepen or the conversation that could lead somewhere because your brain is saying,"Not them," or,"They can't afford it," or,"That's not who we are. That's not our donor." Or,"This might go wrong. What will they think of me if I ask and they think I've got the wrong idea?" So the key I want you to think about here is that you're not operating in reality. You are operating in a filtered version of reality, just like me and everyone else. So the way this shows up around money is y- you might do a calculation in your head. I was talking with a client about this last week. It was,"You know, well, I, I should've asked them for another meeting, and then I waited months and months, and now I'm afraid to reach out because I'm afraid they're gonna judge me, that it's been so long since the last time I reached out." So they stay frozen. Or maybe we decide for that person, they're not ready to take the next step, or,"I don't wanna bother them." I've talked on here before about the culture of some of the organizations where I've worked. We so didn't want to bother our donors that we hardly ever contacted them, and if we did, it was in, you know, these ornate letters that were overly flowery in their language because we wanted to telegraph the idea that our donors were smart. And so we're writing to them like, quote-unquote,"smart people," and we're just putting all of this flowery language in here. And what we're doing is actually separating ourselves from the donors because it's harder to read. It's a mental drag to read something that's overly flowery, to find the facts in between the flowery language, right? We want language that's accessible. People are busy. We don't wanna give them a mountain to climb when we're writing a letter to them. What are they saying here? What are they trying to convey? You just wanna give them plain, simple language. Or maybe you're not following up because you say,"Well, they saw my email, and they'll respond if they want to," right? I'm giving you, the donor, the prospective donor, so much leeway, so much space to come to me if you want to, that the message you're actually getting as the donor is,"This organization doesn't care about me. They're not thinking of me. If they were, they would've called." Or maybe you're not expanding relationships because you say,"Well, that's not my role. This other person has the more close relationship with them," or,"I'm not senior enough." And, and I'm just calling this out as clearly as I can. These examples that I've given are not facts. They are filters. And every time you obey a filter, you might be walking past money. So I just wanna normalize this for you. This is not a character flaw. This is a human thing. And better to know that this pattern exists than to have this pattern controlling you. So this is all very academic and thoughtful at this point, but I really wanna bring it back to the body because so much of the work that I do with people is somatic. It lives in the body. So when you're walking past opportunities like this, your system is constantly asking,"Is it safe to be seen? Is it safe to risk rejection? Is it safe to take a big swing? Is it safe to succeed, or will I lose relationships if I start to have success here?" Will people be jealous of me? Or will I step on somebody else's toes, right? That's what I mean by managing our relationships by not taking action You literally cannot see the trail that's right there, and in the body, that can look like constriction. It can look like tightness in the belly, tightness in the chest, and behaviorally, it might look like avoidance. We've talked about this before. The easy conclusion to reach is,"This doesn't feel comfortable in my body, so I'm not gonna take action." So we end up kind of putting a pin in a relationship, like this donor."I'm just not sure that it's the right time to move forward, so put a pin in it." And every time we do that, your brain, your body is choosing safety over taking action. But you're also sabotaging your work. You're also sabotaging your ability to Really take an opportunity that's right in front of you. And I remember reading the paper one day and seeing that a donor was giving a huge donation to another organization, and it was somebody that I was getting ready to ask, but hadn't asked yet. And that feeling, my friend, I wanna spare you that feeling as much as possible. When I was getting ready to get ready to ask them, somebody else was asking them, and they were saying yes. And it was a pivotal donation that really moved that organization forward to do something that they needed to do, and my organization had needs as well. And I missed that opportunity because I wanted to be perfect. I wanted it to be exactly ready and exactly ripe and in perfectly positioned. And I'm here to tell you that one, that one cost me a lot. That one hurt. So I want you to be able to tap into a feeling of safety and noticing that you are safe, be able to take action. Those two go together. You are s- responsible for creating your own safety, feeling that in your body, and also taking action, not from a place of white-knuckling it, not from a place of panic."Uh, I better get this ask in before the donor says yes to somebody else." That's not the energy. Nope.'Cause the donor feels that, and it feels like desperation, and it's gross. But what we talk about in this podcast is creating your own safety. And in order to do that, you gotta slow down a minute. You've gotta check in with your body, even if it's just 90 seconds and on the toilet temple Right? Come back to yourself. Notice that safety is already here, and then name the action that you wanna take, and then take that action. So the first step is noticing when you're on i- autopilot and then asking a disruptive question: What am I not seeing right now? What am I not seeing? What's the thing I'm not seeing right now? And then identify one person or a follow-up or a bigger ask that you've been avoiding And before you reach out to that person, I want you to feel your feet on the ground, slow your breathing down, come back to center, and then take that one small step onto the trail. Send that email, make the call, extend the invitation. Not perfectly, just movement forward. Give yourself the gift of doing it imperfectly. So back to that story I told you earlier of the trail that I was walking past. You know, that trail didn't appear the day I noticed it. It had been there the entire time, and I'm grateful to that runner for making that hard hairpin turn right in front of me when I thought I was gonna get crashed into because she illuminated that trail for me. Somebody else making the choice to go in a different direction let me see, there's this beautiful other option here, and it had been there the entire time. So the opportunities in your work, in your relationships, in your fundraising, they're already here. But if you are so flat out moving, moving, moving that you don't give yourself a moment to look around and ask what you're missing, you're gonna miss it. Or if you're so stuck not moving that you're making the same choices every day, avoiding the same actions every day, you're gonna miss it as well. So the question isn't where is the money? The question is, this is magic, I promise you if you will give yourself the latitude to ask this question: What am I not allowing myself to see? So here are your takeaways from this episode. Number one, you're not missing opportunities, you're filtering them out. Number two, your brain prioritizes safety over possibility. Number three, what feels like it's not ready is often just a feeling of,"I'm not safe yet." And the good news is you control your feeling of safety. That's something you can give to yourself. Number four, there is likely one opportunity that you're avoiding right now. What is that opportunity? And number five, take one small action'cause that's enough to step onto the trail and be open to an opportunity that you've not been allowing yourself to see. Thank you for listening. I'll see you next time