Scarcity Speaks Before You Do
I see this all the time in fundraising: A leader walks into a donor conversation with the right message, the right deck, the right impact stories, the right ask strategy. But underneath all of that, something else is speaking much louder.
The fear of missing their fundraising goal, the pressure of meeting payroll, the board’s expectations (spoken and unspoken).
The feeling that this one conversation has to go well, really well, and that this one donor might finally relieve the pressure.
These are totally human experiences, and I’ve felt them all myself. Each of us, as nonprofit leaders who have carried real responsibility, knows what this feels like. I’m sure just reading this is bringing up a recent memory of this for you.
While this isn’t wrong to feel these things, there is one big watch out we need to pay attention to that makes matters worse. When scarcity (in our thinking, in our speaking, and how we hold it in our body) starts leading the conversation, the invitation to donors changes, and not for the good.
We may still be talking about the mission, and maybe even focused on impact, but what the donor feels is: Please rescue us. Please validate me. Please make this fear go away.
That is a very different energy than: Here’s what we believe is possible, here’s why it matters, and here’s the future we are inviting you to help create with us.
This is why I don’t think fundraising problems are always fundraising problems. Sometimes the message is fine, the strategy is fine, and the donor is interested. But the messenger - in this case you - is carrying so much pressure that the invitation begins to shrink.
We start to over-explain, adding one more paragraph. We start to infuse fear into our speaking, apologizing before the ask, or negotiating with ourselves during it. We make our organization’s need bigger than the possibility, and that has us start trying to convince rather than invite. Have you noticed this happen to you?
Again, we’re not wrong for slipping into these actions, it’s just that scarcity is loud and it’s filling up our being. When we don’t notice it, it starts writing the message for us.
The work is not to pretend the pressure isn’t real. It is real.
The work is to notice how this pressure is showing up in our body, and how is it influencing my donor conversations.
Is it fear or commitment? Is it urgency or clarity? Is it the need to close the gap or the possibility of what this donor could help make real? Our donors don't only respond to what we say, they respond to what our words are carrying.
As an Executive Director, I had to learn the hard way to take my fear of meeting payroll and put it down before I had a donor conversation. Because when I didn’t, the donors could feel my fear, even if I said the right thing. And that fear was contagious and had them pull back.
In my donor conversations, I needed to learn to live in possibility and impact. Because the truth is, the future is not known to us yet, and we don’t want to project our scarcity into a future we are asking donors to co-create with us. This is not about hiding the truth, it’s about standing for a future that doesn’t exist yet, and asking someone to join you in making it happen. When that future happens, it includes your current state, and transcends it.
That is the work, the real inner work, that allows us to live with both concerns about payroll and invite in possibilities.
I’m curious: Where do you notice scarcity showing up most often in your leadership? And how do you deal with it when you notice it?