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A Conversation with Mallory Erickson on Aligning Purpose and Practice | Nonprofit411 Podcast · Nonprofit411 Podcast

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org to download your guide and take the next step towards sustainable growth.
Hello and welcome to Nonprofit 411, where we dive into resources and strategies that help nonprofits not just survive, but truly thrive.
I'm Sarah Barton, your host and fundraising advocate.
Each episode, we bring you inspiring conversations with experts in fundraising, sustainability, and best practices to equip you with the tools and confidence you need to make a real impact.
I'm so excited to be back today and I'm with our guest Mallory Erickson from What The Fundraising.
She, she's the founder there.
Hello, how are you today? I'm good.
Thank you so much for having me.
Yes, I'm so excited.
I think we'll have, we're going to have a great conversation.
So before we get started pick a number between one and 10 for your random question, your random fun question.
Oh my gosh, seven.
All right.
What did you want to be when you When you were young, what did you want to be when you grew up? Oh my gosh, that's so funny.
That's so funny because yesterday on LinkedIn, I literally shared that piece of information in a post.
I mean, I definitely had different views when I, at different phases of my kind of like childhood and adolescence.
At one point, I wanted to be a sports announcer.
And yeah, that was, that was a fun phase.
And then there was a phase where I wanted to be a teacher, another phase where I wanted to be a park ranger, like a national parks ranger, sort of a recluse in a cabin somewhere in the woods.
So yeah, those were, those were a lot of my different dreams as a kid.
Oh, that's fun.
I just got done reading The Alchemist, and it says that when, when we're a young child, whatever our dreams are, they're the most pure form of what we desire, so.
Interesting.
I don't know that I still desire the sports announcing, but I do desire to be alone in the woods.
Yeah, it's funny because, well, my best friend from college is a park ranger, and She is not quiet or reclusive.
Like she's super outgoing.
So I find that really funny that you, you described it as quiet and, you know, serene.
That's not her at all.
Maybe I feel like it would be more so, but I also would, am not usually described as quiet.
Yeah, that's great.
So, so tell us about what the fundraising and how you kind of got started in this work and what you do through what the fundraising.
Yeah, so I so I was, like so many people, an accidental fundraiser who really hated fundraising, and so I started fundraising first in a managing director role, and then an executive director role, and I was always just wildly uncomfortable with it, and I felt like everybody had a Secrets to fundraising that I didn't understand and would never understand and sort of everybody had been told something what to do and I was just trying to figure out what that was and and felt like I was Usually getting pretty generic.
Recommendations like, Oh, just build relationships, like build relationships.
Don't talk about money, but like, get someone to like you for long enough that at some point in 12 to 18 months, maybe they're going to want to give you some of their money.
And I was just like, this feels so weird and uncomfortable and disingenuous and unaligned with me.
And so I got to this moment where I was like, I think I might need to leave the nonprofit sector.
I just cannot figure out how to make this fundraising thing work for me.
I ended up having sort of this accidental combination of life experiences.
I got certified as an executive coach.
I got trained in habit and behavior design and design thinking.
None of those were initially connected to my fundraising, but they all ended up really changing the way that I showed up as a fundraiser.
And it had a huge impact financially on the organization.
I was running at the time we moved from a million to 3.
8 million pretty quickly, but more importantly than that.
Was how I felt was that I felt fundamentally different as a fundraiser and then honestly I started to love fundraising and I didn't want to leave.
I was not somebody who burned out on fundraising and then became a consultant because I was so burned out frontline fundraising.
I actually loved frontline fundraising and then, but then I wanted to tell everybody what I had discovered for me.
And so I just started talking about it, particularly during COVID or like, that's really when it started because I was so.
And I was seeing this like paralysis and discomfort around fundraising, particularly at the beginning of COVID.
And so I was like, Oh, no, no, no, like, and, and I started to just share things that had been really transformative for me, not expecting sort of the response and that things would sort of explode from there.
You know, trying to sort of coach and support the sector on one side while also continuing in my frontline fundraising role because I really liked that on the other side.
I also had no child care and a baby and all these things.
So it got to a point where I was like, I can't do both.
I have to choose.
There seems to be a lot of interest in me talking more about these frameworks.
And so, I ultimately, you know, eventually moved into this full time which really started with the establishment of my program my course called the Power Partners Formula, which is really the, my alignment fundraising methodology is really the the root of what I teach and guide people through in there, and then that just sort of opened up this hyper fixation for me on trying to better understand what is happening inside our brains and bodies when we fundraise as nonprofit leaders, and what are some of the perhaps uncommon.
tools or strategies that actually really shift how we fundraise.
So I started, this is a very long story and I will stop telling it in a second, but I, I launched Power Partners.
I launched Power Partners, which has four phases, phase 0, and then phase 1, phase 2, phase 3.
And I started getting these emails from people like, I just moved my organization from 200, 000 a year to 700, 000 a year.
Or I just raised 45, 000 for the first time.
Or I just moved this donor to this thing.
And then I would log into the portal and I'd be like, okay, what did they do? Like I want to see the pathway they took through the course and what lessons really helped lead them there.
And time and time again, I found a lot of people seeing results like that just from phase zero.
And phase zero was the executive coaching.
And all of a sudden I realized not that strategy doesn't matter at all and not that, you know, all those things don't matter at all, but that just that piece, just what is happening inside of us and just tools.
I say just, even though it's really big, of course, but tools that address us on a human level, on a cognitive and a somatic level.
Those had the ability to increase capacity inside an organization immediately by increasing capacity inside that fundraiser, which didn't have anything to do with them spending more time fundraising and had everything to do with reducing their resistance to fundraising that was taking a lot of time.
And so that sort of like kick started my, you know, obsession on figuring out, okay, What is this intersection between how we feel and what we do in fundraising? Which started my podcast, what the fundraising in the summer of 2021.
I think I launched it on my daughter's second birthday.
Like on July 19th, and then I started to interview primarily therapists, you know, therapists, psychiatrists, behavioral scientists, neuroscientists, really trying to figure out like this piece of the puzzle and then the book that just came out a few weeks ago is really the synthesis of a lot of the The the argument that has formed over time for me as I've as I've been doing this research, having these conversations trying to push this, this, you know, element forward in our sector.
And so it was finally time to put it on paper, I guess.
Yeah, so I love, I love your approach.
I, you know, I think all fundraisers are accidental fundraisers.
I actually don't know any of you were like, yes, this is what I plan to do in my life.
Like we all kind of stumble into it.
Right.
And when you become an accidental fundraiser, but it isn't part of, well, one, typically you'd never get any training, but if you have a lot of anxiety around it, it makes it so difficult.
To like, it's funny.
My husband and I were just saying we were both procrastinating on something that we need to do And it's not hard.
It's just that we haven't done it, right? We have resistance to it.
And so we haven't done it and that's what happens so often with fundraising And so when you can change shift that right you can really You can make huge strides when you're no longer feeling that resistance within you because you feel like you're burdening somebody.
Are you familiar with Lynn Twist? Yes, and I actually, I quote her in the book.
I'm trying to remember what chapter I start with her, but I talk about the soul of money in the book and and that had such a meaningful impact on me as well.
Yes, me too.
And I, I loved when she talks about inviting people, like you see a problem in the world and you want to invite others to help you.
To the solution that you know will work like I love that.
She really shifted things for me.
Also, so So I really appreciated that.
So tell me So tell me where do you recommend a person who? needs to Address their resistance to fundraising.
Where do they start? Oh, well I mean the very first the very first step is really just acknowledging that it exists You know, I think, like, our brain, when our brain is stressed, And goes into and goes into a stressed mode like that It it really it turns off our prefrontal cortex, which is like our strategy you know kind of like thinking part of our brain and we Our brain ends up kind of shooting off a lot of narratives that are designed to keep us safe Which means not take action right when we go into survival mode when we're in that chronic stress state You Our, our brain's only job is to, like, not let us die and conserve our energy.
And so it starts to rattle off all these narratives that will help us do those two things.
Yeah.
And so it starts to tell us things like, you don't have enough experience here.
You don't have enough information to send that email.
So and so is going to be mad at you for emailing them.
A week apart because you just sent that blank is going to be mad because you invited them to this event last year, right, our brain starts to tell us all these things that we take as truth, because we're scared, and because we are trying to protect ourselves from any exposure or vulnerability, anything like that.
And so the very first step.
And so we don't notice it as resistance at first, we feel like we have these very validated reasons for why we shouldn't be taking action, right? We're not, I never was like, Oh, I'm scared.
I was like, Oh, this is a bad time, right? Like in my head, or I was like, Oh, you know, I don't, I just need to take another training, or I just need to tweak that impact report one more time, or I just need to.
And so we have these disguised narratives that are truly about fear.
fear, but that feel very real and true in terms of why we shouldn't be taking action.
So honestly, the very first step is just awareness around how you feel.
That like perhaps that narrative in your head that has told you, you're not good enough.
You're not smart enough.
You're not charismatic enough.
You don't have enough information about this.
Your organization will be ready then.
When, you know, all of those things, perhaps the first step is just to recognize that maybe, just maybe, those narratives are coming from fear and not truth.
And then letting yourself bring some awareness into your body.
About what that feels like that that exists that that resistance exists that that fear exists that oh my gosh There's that tightness in my belly or you know This nausea walking into the meeting and so really if all people take away Like the reason I wrote the book is because you know, you can't coach one on one a hundred You know 1.
million non profits And so I was like I sort of like wound it back and I was like, okay but like if I could give Every non profit something, what would I give them? And it was awareness.
I would give them awareness of what's happening.
Of, of, of, that their experience is normal and understandable.
And acknowledge and validate their feelings without validating that that, the stories they hear in their head are true.
Which are two very different things.
And so, yeah, that's step one.
Yes.
Yeah, I think, I think awareness, there's so much in our lives that we don't have, I think in the United States, we don't have a lot of strong practices.
Cultural practices, like to bring awareness to our bodies as you know, I think that we're developing them.
I've actually seen a huge amount of transition in this aware body awareness, you know, since COVID actually, I, I applaud us since COVID people are stopping and just, you know, Feeling right.
And so when we do that, you're right.
We can then start to separate.
We can separate what all is in our head.
So that's great.
So bringing awareness to the fact that you might be, you might have some resistance and a little bit of fear about this.
And then, So let's say that we've done that.
What are the, what are their systems that you recommend that can also help with the fundraising strategy to make it easier? Yes.
So I mean, I think there's sort of, there's like two pieces to this, right? There's like, well, okay, so it's really interesting that you said the word easier.
So this is something I think we, we a word we use in our sector a lot when we mean simple and not that simple isn't important, right? So I think there's pieces of what comes next or like what you do next that make it easier.
Part of what makes it easier is some of the self coaching or the tools to downregulate your nervous system.
system, when you start to experience doubt or chatter.
Acknowledging and validating your feelings, using a sentence like, that makes sense.
Like it makes sense that I'm nervous to press send on this email.
It makes sense that I feel nervous to walk into this donor meeting.
And then there's this section of distant self talk where you refer to yourself in your brain with like you and your first name.
So you've done hard things like this before Mallory.
You can do it like these are these are cognitive tools that have been scientifically proven to down regulate our nervous system and they help us get over the action line.
They make fundraising easier in our body for us to be able to take action.
Then there's this section of what we do that I think is maybe where you're going to, which also makes it easier.
easier to stay in that aligned embodied state, which is to look for alignment instead of just money.
So alignment, alignment is talked about a lot in our sector, but we talk about it, like, as just a strategy in the sense that anybody can send an email that says, I want to figure out if we are aligned with each other.
Right? Like we're starting to hear alignment play or we're starting to see alignment play out as a strategic way of getting in front of a funder.
But there's a difference between alignment being a strategy and alignment being an intention.
Alignment being an intention is that, like, we really are looking to figure out whether or not that funder wants the same things as us, values the same things as us, is really going to be in partnership with us, and, and, you know, Intending to find alignment is both strategy and really it's about, again, what's happening inside of you.
You know, in the book I call it Alignment Fundraising, capital A, capital F, and I say straight up in the book, I'm not the only person who talks about alignment.
I did not invent the idea of alignment.
What, what alignment fundraising is about though, that is really different, It's about that personal alignment and what it looks like to stay in that despite what's happening around you.
So we can say we're looking for alignment, but do you stand in your alignment when scarcity beliefs come in? Do you stand in your alignment when you're worried about hitting your budget at the end of the year? What does it look like for you to be able to stay in alignment inside of you and continue to prioritize it even when all of the things that we know that happen in fundraising happen.
And so, and so yes, there's a strategy in the book in part, you know, the first part of the book is called the problem.
The second part of the book is called the solution.
And in the solution section, it starts with the inner alignment work.
Then it moves into alignment fundraising strategy.
How do you identify, how do you understand different types of funders better? Like what are foundations looking for in partnership? What are corporate partners looking for? What are individuals looking for? What are some of the assets that they value? What are some of the assets that you have? How do you figure out whether or not you are aligned with those partners? So it sort of talks through really like the.
The sort of lenses the fundraisers should apply to identify alignment.
And then it gives them strategies around, okay, now how do you cultivate alignment? How do you look forward in terms of how you're outreaching to people? How do you prioritize alignment in a meeting? How do you not fall back into money first strategies? But all of those kind of like strategic pieces have to start with, like, have to be rooted in personal alignment.
Yes.
Yeah, and I think that you make such a great point about staying in alignment when the struggles come, right? Because that's when we're very frequent to, like, jump into our default, whatever our default is.
Often the, often, you know, the scarcity mindset is so, prevalent, I think.
I hate to say that, but it's very prevalent in the non profit sector, right? And so like, so I really, I appreciate this.
I love partnerships and I'm, I really love developing partnerships because we're all so frequently, we're all targeting the same audiences.
Right.
And so like, I'm like, it just makes sense.
Like you meet this need for them.
You, I meet this need for them and we can do this together and we actually produce more.
And, but I do, but I've struggled, I've struggled in my work even Where I can, I can see and stay in that alignment, but sometimes my organization doesn't stay in that alignment.
So other people at the organization, you know, they don't stay in that alignment.
So there are struggle, you know, so that's a struggle.
Have you experienced that struggle before? Of course.
I mean, I think, and, and this was, this was like a hard, a hard like, needle to thread in the book.
But I say it multiple times, which is that, like, there is no amount of inner work that fixes a toxic workplace.
Right? However, what the inner work does is increase our capacity for dealing with it.
And we don't have to abandon ourselves the way that, like, I certainly did for so many years, even when my organization does fall out of alignment with a funder, right? So a lot of times I found myself asking questions like, okay, I see the organization prioritizing money right now over alignment.
What does it look like? Where are my boundaries around that? Like, what does it look like in terms of how I stay in my personal alignment? And so much of executive coaching is really about conscious choice.
So something I say to my clients all the time is like, Listen, you don't need, like, it doesn't mean you never make a decision for money.
Ever.
We all do that.
Like we, you have to pay your staff, whatever.
But you'd make it from a place of conscious choice.
Not a place of feeling trapped.
Not a place, and so, in doing so, you're still very aware of your alignment.
And you're like, okay, This isn't an accident right here we are in this situation.
Here's this timeline that's come up and that alignment we don't go from being misaligned to full alignment, like in a day, right, it's all about these like one degree shifts towards reorienting us.
In alignment.
So that's the other thing.
I just want if people are like, oh my god I feel so far away from really like being in my body and being aligned.
That's okay.
I was too It was like what does it look like to be 10 percent more aligned in partnership with that funder? What does it look like to be five percent more aligned? with yourself.
Is there a boundary you want to start expressing that doesn't just throw a donor out or jeopardize all these things, but is like, you know what, here's where that hard boundary lies for me to really like have my own back in this situation.
And I'm not withdrawing from this partnership or I'm not whatever, but I am renegotiating this piece of it that feels out of alignment.
Yeah, and every little bit helps, right? Every little bit of alignment makes, makes us feel so much better.
And so one of the things I always say is that it's practice, not perfection, right? So, and, and every, I, I came just came from a community health background.
I've worked, I worked in community health for eight years.
So when we talk about the health of an individual, right, every healthy choice matters.
So every aligned choice matters, because one, we've practiced being aligned, we've been mindful of it.
And then as we make that step.
You know, we have a success.
And so every success leads us to the next.
And, you know, in health care, we don't, we don't always see the outcome of every healthy choice that the individual has made, you know, because progress is slow, but every single time they make a healthy choice.
They're getting closer because they can repeat they can repeat a good behavior, right? Mm hmm.
I think it's so important because we, there's so much in our world that kind of pushes this like all or nothing thinking.
And also that we experience some cognitive dissonance when we try to change too quickly, right? Like who we are and how we understand ourselves and stuff like that.
And so, you know, in the book, like I, I walk, I'm very open about a lot of my mistakes.
And I'm really open about a lot of the things that I got wrong.
I'm open about different phases of the journey into more alignment.
I think people see me in the like version that I'm in now, and they think, Oh my gosh, I woke up one day and was like, I don't want to be this way anymore.
And then, and now I'm like this way.
Like it was years of, of realigning and making more of those shifts and making more of those choices.
And one of the things I talk about in the book is the, is discomfort.
I And how there are different types of discomfort right and we can't just we can't just avoid discomfort and we shouldn't avoid discomfort because some types of discomfort sure come from the transactional ways we've been taught to fundraise those forms of discomfort lead towards more of that.
Chronic dysregulation, chronic stress and burnout, but some discomfort comes from holding the line on alignment, like in a moment, even when it's really scary, that is super uncomfortable.
And so we, part of the, like when you asked what's the, First place to start.
This is why that awareness piece is so important, right? Because a question you can ask yourself is like am I Uncomfortable right now because I'm out of alignment or am I uncomfortable right now because I'm holding the line on alignment And that isn't letting me maybe people please in the way I have before or be the perfectionist that i've had before These are all my own identities, right? Like that i'm sharing and so, yeah, so just I totally agree with everything you're saying Yeah, those are great.
And I, I love that you mentioned, you know, like this, I think that this is such a sustainability issue in fundraising.
Well, fundraising is a sustainability skill, right? It's what we have to have in order to continue to do the mission that we have do in our world.
And.
There's lots of things that lead to burnout, but you're right.
The misalignment, the fear, the overwhelm leads to burnout.
And when we think about making our sector more sustainable, I think that your work is really contributing in a positive way to allowing the, the, and right, the, I can be uncomfortable and I don't have to, you know, Burn myself out and live in the overwhelm.
And so I think that's so important.
I think like we, we often make it an or statement, right? It's either, or, but this is a great way to see it as an and so that we can continue in the good work that we're doing.
Yeah.
Does that make sense? I feel like I'm not making sense.
No, no, it does.
And actually, it's so interesting that you say this because I was when I was coming out with the book or like writing the book or whatever, done with it, I can't even remember, you know, I was, I experienced a lot of fear myself in putting this out there.
There's something about writing a book.
I, you know, I've put content out there for years now.
And so I really thought that this wasn't like a significant level up in terms of visibility, right? I speak all the time, I have a podcast, I write a lot, but there was something about kind of the publishing of something that felt, that really like stirred up all of my skills.
stuff.
And one of the things, I remember talking to my husband one day and he was like, what are you, like, what is, what's one of the things you're really afraid of? And I was like, this book is all nuance.
It is all yes and.
It is all both.
It is, and, and, and when we're in stress, which most fundraisers are, our brain is in stress.
Binary thinking it really is in either or thinking and so that happens to all of us It's a very normal part of what happens in that state And so I was like I am trying to meet people where they're at in a moment where things are feeling very binary And I'm trying to pull them into the gray, and that feels scary not just because in fundraising, but in everything in our world right now, it feels so much more binary, right? And like, we have so much less space for nuance, and I was like, but that, the answers, in my opinion, to all of this, like, live in that nuance.
Yeah.
It's actually something that as a parent I've had to really exercise and learn.
How old are your children? I have a five year old and a one year old almost.
Yeah.
So mine are 20.
I have twin 20 year olds and I have a 16 year old.
And I used to listen to a podcast and it was about being able to communicate with your teens.
And moving into the and was one of the things that they recommended and it's been years ago since I'd listened to it, but it really resonated with me because when my kids were really young, and I think that your work does this too.
I learned that giving myself permission out loud was a really important practice, right? So like, Sarah, you're allowed to have a messy floor.
Sarah, you're allowed to, you know, whatever it was.
And so, so I think that your work is really vital because it does it in the space of our sector.
It says you're allowed to feel this way and You're allowed and you're able to do hard things within that space, even though you feel that way.
And so I think, you know, bringing it in, bringing that into the sector is really, really necessary in a sector that is very emotionally driven.
You know, so we have a lot of high feeling people in the sector and.
So because of that, because that's, they're passionate and that's what drives them.
It's also what cripples them, right? Having too much, having too much of that.
And so I think that your work Is I'm really really vital because it speaks to the people in the sector and the passion in the areas where they exist.
And so thank you for that.
Thanks for saying that.
Yeah.
So, all right, as we wrap up, is, are there, is there any advice that you want to give to our listeners if they are just beginning their fundraising or they've been in it a while and they don't love it or they're learning to love it, what is the one piece of advice that they all need to know? I mean, Well, first of all to just know that they're not alone, right? Like I think I thought I was a bad fundraiser for a very long time because I was like There's no way that good fundraisers feel this way So I think one thing is to know that you know Whether it's discomfort or stress like I talk about in the book These like five elements of fundraising that have been scientifically proven to increase our stress That we don't normally talk about and burnout we talk about burnout a lot from the overwork perspective, but rejection Rejection uncertainty Isolation, power dynamics, pressure, all things that are very big parts of fundraising activate our stress response.
So we need tools that, that are about responding to that because we're in roles that do that very normally and naturally.
So I think the first thing I would say is like for people to know.
That however they're feeling, you are not alone, you are not the only one that feels this way, and it doesn't mean that you are bad at what you're doing.
The other thing that I would say, even though I know you asked for one thing, but I'm gonna give you two things because that's how my ADHD brain works, which is that The work that you're doing, fundraisers, is really sacred and really important, and that when fundraising is done in alignment, it feels really good to everyone.
And people want to be generous.
People want to belong.
They want to be included.
They want to make change in their community.
They want to feel like they matter.
And fundraising has the ability to do all of that.
To bring people together, to share assets, to make change that they both want to see.
It is a deeply desired experience in humanity and the work of fundraising that focuses on alignment does that.
It moves money with intention and power and connectivity in ways that Feel good and will solve the biggest challenges of our time And so I just want fundraiser close your eyes take a moment put your hand on your heart And just like take a second to be really proud of yourself whether you've moved ten dollars or ten million dollars All of it is a way in which we inspire people to express their values in one way that is a critical way if we want to, you know, make, make the many of the big changes we want to see made.
Wow.
There's nothing else I want to say after that.
Thank you so much for joining us today.
Thank you to the listeners for joining us also.
I'm really going to have to, I'm going to have to think about this conversation for a while.
There's so much good stuff in it.
So thank you, Mallory.
I am so excited to share this with the listeners.
Thank you so much for having me and for the work that you do.
I really appreciate it.
Thank you.
Thank you so much for tuning in to this episode of Nonprofit 411.
I hope you found today's conversation as insightful and inspiring as I did.
Remember, building a healthy nonprofit requires a holistic approach.
There are many resources available to support your staff and we're dedicated to helping your organization access what it needs to thrive.
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