Do you see financial resources as a zero-sum game? If another fundraiser gets more, does it mean your nonprofit receives less? Check that mindset! My guest on this episode of What the Fundraising is here to offer a completely different – far more generous – lens on wealth. Angela Matthews, the founder of the Happy Investor Method, shares an approach fueled by her vision of bounty in both business and in life.

“Long gone are the days of martyrdom and choice poverty because I have something that someone else doesn’t. I’m over it,” says Angela. Having grown up poor and determined to change the narrative, she started looking for tools to unlock wealth and an abundance she could share. Based on her investing success, Angela has developed a step-by-step program to help clients banish shame in favor of agency, opening doors to opportunity in unexpected ways! To get there, however, we first must be willing to sit with messy, uncomfortable money issues embedded in our psyches and deal with scars that are often passed down trans-generationally. 

You’ll learn what brought Angela to this work and why claiming financial purpose is an essential first step toward shifting self-limiting beliefs. We discuss the binary approach to money that leave nonprofits unnecessarily constricted and unpack what it might look like for fundraisers to take an entirely different approach to how we talk about money.

If you’re ready to make the connection between happiness and wealth, use this link to learn more about Angela’s program or, better yet, schedule a discovery call here.

Many thanks to our incredible sponsors at DonorPerfect. DonorPerfect has a lot of free educational resources for fundraisers. Learn more and download some of their guides and tools today at donorperfect.com/mallory.

Episode Highlights

(02:20) A brief intro to Angela and her hands-on approach to bringing a realistic but also intentionally abundant lens to fundraising.

(03:12) Angela shares her personal money story, from her early experience of poverty to the Google research she did to set her course towards sustainable, self-made wealth.

(06:43) Angela explains her starting point when it comes to helping others unlock abundance. Often it starts with identifying (then releasing) trauma of some kind, either bad choices we’ve made in the past or transgenerational wounding around money.

(07:48) What do I have to show for it? Reframing money with a more nuanced understanding of value. It isn’t always demonstrable or tangible. 

(11:40) Investing and what it means to sit in the discomfort of temporary loss, maintaining equanimity and a sense of safety in trusting the future.

(14:50) Angela helps us to zoom out to look at investments and the market with proportion and a long-term perspective, whatever the season.

(20:40) Everything changes when more of us get wealthy, opening up global pathways away from scarcity and towards abundance, generosity, and growth.

(26:17) Ditch the binary! The story of money is that it comes and goes, ebbs and flows. One person’s gain does not equate with another person’s loss, so if you do something nice for yourself, it doesn’t follow that you are depriving someone else.

(28:19) Angela urges us to take a holistic view of money, allowing space for generous investment in others as well as in ourselves. 

(30:47) Angela challenges nonprofits to flow more abundance into their donor engagement models, incorporating new and humanizing connections.  

(32:51) Money is complicated and fraught, steeped in everything from transgenerational trauma to knotted emotions and attachments. 

(36:28) So much of the work Mallory believes that fundraisers must do around money requires grappling with discomfort.

(37:25) You can have the perfect pitch deck and impact report for a major donor meeting, but if you’re still harboring uncomfortable, unexplored money issues then you are not ready to own the room!

(40:02) Learn more about Angela