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The Brave and Balanced Fundraiser
The Brave and Balanced Fundraiser episodes
- 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
Send Erin a text
✨ Stay Connected & Continue Your Fundraising Growth
Listen to all episodes + subscribe:
https://thebraveandbalancedfundraiser.buzzsprout.comNewsletter Sign-up: The Brave & Balanced Note
Join the community:
The Brave & Balanced Fundraiser Facebook Group
👉 https://www.facebook.com/groups/braveandbalancedfundraiserBook a Brave & Balanced Breakthrough Call:
A personalized 1:1 session to support your inner clarity and fundraising wellbeing.
👉 https://calendly.com/vitalistcoaching/brave-balanced-breakthroughLearn more about Erin’s coaching & nervous-system based support:
VitalistCoaching.comConnect on Instagram:
@erinmcquadewright24 min - Why Fundraisers Feel Responsible for the Money
The Hidden Pressure Behind Nonprofit Revenue Goals
If you work in fundraising, you may know the quiet pressure that lives in the background of the job: the feeling that if the money doesn’t come in, something bad might happen. Programs could shrink, staff jobs could be at risk, and the mission you care about might struggle to continue.
In this episode, Erin explores why so many fundraisers end up carrying the emotional weight of their organization’s finances — and how that pressure can show up in the body, the nervous system, and the way we approach donor conversations.
You’ll learn why this sense of responsibility is so common, how it can quietly shape your fundraising energy, and how releasing that burden can lead to more grounded, relational, and sustainable fundraising.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
• Why fundraisers often feel personally responsible for their organization’s financial health
• The three forces that create this pressure: proximity to revenue, mission-driven empathy, and nervous system patterns
• How over-responsibility can show up in the body as tension, urgency, or anxiety
• The powerful shift that happens when you remember your role is to facilitate generosity — not control every outcomeWhen fundraisers release the belief that everything depends on them, the nervous system settles. And when that happens, fundraising becomes what it was always meant to be: a relationship, not a rescue mission.
If this conversation resonated with you, consider sharing it with a fellow fundraiser who might need the reminder that they’re not carrying this work alone.
You can also join the conversation inside the Brave & Balanced Fundraiser Facebook community (https://www.facebook.com/share/g/181QkraoKQ/), where fundraisers talk honestly about the inner side of this work.
Send Erin a text
✨ Stay Connected & Continue Your Fundraising Growth
Listen to all episodes + subscribe:
https://thebraveandbalancedfundraiser.buzzsprout.comNewsletter Sign-up: The Brave & Balanced Note
Join the community:
The Brave & Balanced Fundraiser Facebook Group
👉 https://www.facebook.com/groups/braveandbalancedfundraiserBook a Brave & Balanced Breakthrough Call:
A personalized 1:1 session to support your inner clarity and fundraising wellbeing.
👉 https://calendly.com/vitalistcoaching/brave-balanced-breakthroughLearn more about Erin’s coaching & nervous-system based support:
VitalistCoaching.comConnect on Instagram:
@erinmcquadewright13 min - Mission Over Burnout with Mary Beth Alvarez
What Fundraisers, Donors, and Doctors Can Teach Us About Sustainability, Mental Health, and the Long Game
In this episode of The Brave and Balanced Fundraiser, Erin is joined by Mary Beth Alvarez, a dual-boarded internist and psychiatrist, public health professional, philanthropist, and longtime nonprofit board member.
Together, they explore why burnout isn’t actually solved by self-care alone… how secrecy and discomfort around money create anxiety for fundraisers and donors alike… and why sustainable fundraising depends on connection to mission, clear expectations, and honest conversation.
Drawing from medicine, mental health, philanthropy, and nonprofit leadership, Mary Beth shares why systems shouldn’t rely on burnout or heroics, how direct asks help people feel included rather than pressured, and what it looks like to play the long game with donors, board members, and fundraising teams.
This episode is for fundraisers who feel the weight of the ask, for donors and board members who want to be genuinely engaged, and for anyone who believes mission-driven work should not come at the cost of well-being.
Send Erin a text
✨ Stay Connected & Continue Your Fundraising Growth
Listen to all episodes + subscribe:
https://thebraveandbalancedfundraiser.buzzsprout.comNewsletter Sign-up: The Brave & Balanced Note
Join the community:
The Brave & Balanced Fundraiser Facebook Group
👉 https://www.facebook.com/groups/braveandbalancedfundraiserBook a Brave & Balanced Breakthrough Call:
A personalized 1:1 session to support your inner clarity and fundraising wellbeing.
👉 https://calendly.com/vitalistcoaching/brave-balanced-breakthroughLearn more about Erin’s coaching & nervous-system based support:
VitalistCoaching.comConnect on Instagram:
@erinmcquadewright35 min - Hold Your Own Energy: A Somatic Reset for Fundraising Events
A Nervous System Approach to Donor Events, Fundraising Anxiety, and Executive Presence
Have you ever left a fundraising gala feeling outwardly successful but internally depleted?
Fundraising events are high-stimulation environments — filled with noise, hierarchy, expectation, and subtle power dynamics. For many nonprofit professionals — especially empathic or highly sensitive fundraisers — these spaces can trigger nervous system overdrive.
In this episode of The Brave & Balanced Fundraiser, Erin explores:
- Why donor events activate stress responses
- How people-pleasing can masquerade as strategy
- What “energetic self-abandonment” looks like in major gift spaces
- Why embodied presence is your true power position
- A 20-second somatic reset you can use in the middle of any gala
If you’ve ever felt yourself scanning the room, over-accommodating influential donors, or subtly shrinking in high-dollar environments, this episode offers a grounded alternative.
Because your authority in fundraising does not come from hovering near power.
It comes from holding your own.
What You’ll Learn in This Episode
- Why fundraising events are neurologically stimulating — especially for Highly Sensitive People (HSPs)
- The difference between strategic attunement and stress-based over-attunement
- How self-abandonment erodes executive presence
- How nervous system regulation builds donor trust
- A discreet somatic grounding practice to reset your energy on the spot
The 20-Second Reset (Quick Reference)
At your next fundraising event:
- Feel your feet inside your shoes.
- Let your shoulders drop one inch.
- Inhale slowly. Exhale longer than you inhale.
- Silently say: “I am here. In my body.”
- Notice one physical sensation.
Presence is power.
Send Erin a text
✨ Stay Connected & Continue Your Fundraising Growth
Listen to all episodes + subscribe:
https://thebraveandbalancedfundraiser.buzzsprout.comNewsletter Sign-up: The Brave & Balanced Note
Join the community:
The Brave & Balanced Fundraiser Facebook Group
👉 https://www.facebook.com/groups/braveandbalancedfundraiserBook a Brave & Balanced Breakthrough Call:
A personalized 1:1 session to support your inner clarity and fundraising wellbeing.
👉 https://calendly.com/vitalistcoaching/brave-balanced-breakthroughLearn more about Erin’s coaching & nervous-system based support:
VitalistCoaching.comConnect on Instagram:
@erinmcquadewright23 min - The Enneagram in Fundraising: Your Superpower and Your Growth Edge
How Your Enneagram Type Shapes Donor Relationships, Major Gifts, and Sustainable Fundraising Success
Have you ever wondered why certain parts of fundraising feel effortless — while others drain you?
In this episode of The Brave & Balanced Fundraiser, Erin explores how the nine Enneagram types show up in fundraising. You’ll discover your fundraising superpower, your hidden growth edge, and how your unconscious personality pattern may be shaping donor conversations more than you realize.
This is not a technical deep dive into wings or subtypes. It’s a practical, high-level lens to help you:
- Understand your motivational pattern
- Fundraise from your strengths
- Notice where stress habits may be costing you
- Regulate your nervous system before making the ask
We all carry all nine types within us — but most of us have one dominant pattern that drives our behavior under pressure. When you understand your pattern, you stop fighting yourself and start leading yourself.
Curious about your type?
You can take a free Enneagram test here:
Eclectic Energies (Free Test):
https://www.eclecticenergies.com/enneagram/testFor a more in-depth, paid assessment developed by Enneagram researchers Don Richard Riso and Russ Hudson:
Riso-Hudson Enneagram Type Indicator (RHETI):
https://www.enneagraminstitute.com/rhetiIf this episode resonated and you’d like personalized support applying this insight to your fundraising and leadership, you can learn more about working with Erin at:
https://vitalistcoaching.comFundraising doesn’t require changing who you are.
It requires becoming more conscious of who you already are.Send Erin a text
✨ Stay Connected & Continue Your Fundraising Growth
Listen to all episodes + subscribe:
https://thebraveandbalancedfundraiser.buzzsprout.comNewsletter Sign-up: The Brave & Balanced Note
Join the community:
The Brave & Balanced Fundraiser Facebook Group
👉 https://www.facebook.com/groups/braveandbalancedfundraiserBook a Brave & Balanced Breakthrough Call:
A personalized 1:1 session to support your inner clarity and fundraising wellbeing.
👉 https://calendly.com/vitalistcoaching/brave-balanced-breakthroughLearn more about Erin’s coaching & nervous-system based support:
VitalistCoaching.comConnect on Instagram:
@erinmcquadewright27 min - Fundraising Resilience: What Are You Making It Mean?
How donor “no’s,” board scrutiny, and grant rejections shape your nervous system—and how to build real resilience from the inside out.
Fundraising is a profession built on exposure to rejection. Donors decline. Boards stress-test your plans. Grants fall through. Finance departments stay cautious. None of this is unusual—but what you make it mean about you can quietly erode your confidence over time.
In this episode of The Brave & Balanced Fundraiser, Erin explores the hidden nervous system impact of repeated “failures to be perfect” and why resilience in fundraising isn’t about grit—it’s about recovery.
You’ll learn:
- Why personalization is the biggest threat to fundraising resilience
- The cumulative nervous system effect of repeated rejection
- How to tell if you’re becoming more resilient—or more reactive
- Why resilience cannot be outsourced to donor behavior
- Proven, research-backed tools to build internal steadiness
This episode includes practical reframing questions, a 90-second emotional processing tool, and simple nervous system resets you can use immediately after setbacks.
Journal Prompt:
What am I making this mean about me?If you want support strengthening your resilience and leading from clarity instead of bracing, you’re invited to explore working with Erin. You’ll find the link in the show notes.
Send Erin a text
✨ Stay Connected & Continue Your Fundraising Growth
Listen to all episodes + subscribe:
https://thebraveandbalancedfundraiser.buzzsprout.comNewsletter Sign-up: The Brave & Balanced Note
Join the community:
The Brave & Balanced Fundraiser Facebook Group
👉 https://www.facebook.com/groups/braveandbalancedfundraiserBook a Brave & Balanced Breakthrough Call:
A personalized 1:1 session to support your inner clarity and fundraising wellbeing.
👉 https://calendly.com/vitalistcoaching/brave-balanced-breakthroughLearn more about Erin’s coaching & nervous-system based support:
VitalistCoaching.comConnect on Instagram:
@erinmcquadewright27 min - Reactive Boss, Constant Pivoting: How Fundraisers Handle Workplace Whiplash Without Burning Out
How to stop managing everyone else’s anxiety and protect your clarity, confidence, and fundraising results.
If your workplace feels like emotional whiplash—full speed ahead on a campaign one day, questioning the entire strategy the next—you’re not imagining it. Reactive leadership creates instability, and fundraisers often end up absorbing the emotional fallout.
Here’s the hard truth: you cannot regulate another adult. Not your boss. Not your board chair. Not your colleague. (If that’s hard to swallow, Erin references The Let Them Theory by Mel Robbins*.)
What you can regulate is yourself.
In this solo episode, Erin breaks down how nervous system dysregulation shows up as constant pivoting, second-guessing, and emotional contagion in fundraising workplaces—and how to stop unconsciously managing everyone else’s anxiety as part of your job description.
You’ll learn how to:
- Recognize when workplace chaos is a nervous system issue, not a strategy issue
- Stop personalizing reactive leadership
- Identify what overwhelm feels like in your body before it hijacks your decision-making
- Welcome difficult emotions instead of suppressing them (and why neuroscience supports this)
- Protect your clarity, confidence, and fundraising effectiveness—even when leadership feels unstable
Erin also shares a simple regulation ritual you can try immediately—including a medicinal-strength lavender and chamomile tea practice—to help you discharge stress and return to steadiness.
Because steady fundraisers raise more money.
Clear-headed leaders make better decisions.
And burnout is not a prerequisite for impact.Journal Prompt:
What am I trying really hard not to feel?If you want support applying this in real time—whether you’re navigating a reactive boss or noticing your own leadership insecurity—Erin offers coaching designed specifically for fundraisers working in high-pressure environments. You’ll find the link to connect below.
Send Erin a text
✨ Stay Connected & Continue Your Fundraising Growth
Listen to all episodes + subscribe:
https://thebraveandbalancedfundraiser.buzzsprout.comNewsletter Sign-up: The Brave & Balanced Note
Join the community:
The Brave & Balanced Fundraiser Facebook Group
👉 https://www.facebook.com/groups/braveandbalancedfundraiserBook a Brave & Balanced Breakthrough Call:
A personalized 1:1 session to support your inner clarity and fundraising wellbeing.
👉 https://calendly.com/vitalistcoaching/brave-balanced-breakthroughLearn more about Erin’s coaching & nervous-system based support:
VitalistCoaching.comConnect on Instagram:
@erinmcquadewright18 min - Fundraising From Abundance with Beth Ann Locke
Practical major gift strategies to reduce fundraising anxiety, build trust, and stop operating from pressure—with insights from a 30-year fundraising veteran.
Major gifts aren’t just strategy—they’re state. In this episode of The Brave & Balanced Fundraiser, Erin is joined by major gift specialist Beth Ann Locke, a 30-year fundraising veteran who teaches connection-based, customized strategies that grow major gifts without turning fundraisers into exhausted social butterflies or transactional “donor-chasers.”
Together, they explore what happens inside a fundraiser’s nervous system when money pressure is high, confidence is battered, or the workplace rewards hustle over relationship. Beth Ann offers practical ways to build donor conversations around trust, curiosity, and alignment—plus simple operational shifts that create more capacity (like deep-work boundaries and post-meeting decompression time).
They also discuss Beth Ann’s role in catalyzing the early sexual harassment survey that helped prompt AFP’s broader research—bringing visibility to a workplace reality too many fundraisers have been forced to carry alone.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
- Why “everyone is a prospect” is a fast track to burnout—and what to do instead
- A powerful reframe for donor silence (and how to stop personalizing it)
- What “non-extractive” donor engagement actually sounds like
- Practical ways to protect deep work and reduce internal interruption overload
- Why naming harassment and bullying in fundraising workplaces changes the culture
Connect with Beth Ann Locke:
- Instagram: @thefundraisercoach
- LinkedIn: Beth Ann Locke
- Blog: Follow her writing for major gifts + fundraising leadership insights at https://www.thefundraisercoach.com/
If this episode helped you, share it with a fundraiser friend who’s been carrying too much pressure—and leave a review so more fundraisers can find the support they deserve.
Send Erin a text
✨ Stay Connected & Continue Your Fundraising Growth
Listen to all episodes + subscribe:
https://thebraveandbalancedfundraiser.buzzsprout.comNewsletter Sign-up: The Brave & Balanced Note
Join the community:
The Brave & Balanced Fundraiser Facebook Group
👉 https://www.facebook.com/groups/braveandbalancedfundraiserBook a Brave & Balanced Breakthrough Call:
A personalized 1:1 session to support your inner clarity and fundraising wellbeing.
👉 https://calendly.com/vitalistcoaching/brave-balanced-breakthroughLearn more about Erin’s coaching & nervous-system based support:
VitalistCoaching.comConnect on Instagram:
@erinmcquadewright1 hr 2 min - Is Your Fundraising Working, or Just Wearing You Out?
How to Measure Fundraising Success Beyond Dollars Raised
What does it really mean for fundraising to be “working”?
Most fundraisers are trained to answer that question by looking at external metrics: dollars raised, donor retention, number of asks, meetings held, emails sent. And while those numbers matter, they don’t tell the whole story.
In this episode of The Brave & Balanced Fundraiser, Erin McQuade-Wright invites you to look at fundraising success through a wider lens—one that includes not just outcomes, but internal cost. How are you sleeping? Are you able to rest when you’re off work? What’s happening in your nervous system as you move through donor conversations, deadlines, and expectations?
You’ll explore the difference between external metrics and internal metrics, how chronic stress and anxiety affect fundraising performance, and why a regulated nervous system is not a “nice to have,” but a professional asset. This episode is for fundraisers who are technically successful—and quietly exhausted—and who suspect there might be a more sustainable way to do this work.
If you’ve ever wondered whether your fundraising is working… or just wearing you out, this conversation is for you.
Send Erin a text
✨ Stay Connected & Continue Your Fundraising Growth
Listen to all episodes + subscribe:
https://thebraveandbalancedfundraiser.buzzsprout.comNewsletter Sign-up: The Brave & Balanced Note
Join the community:
The Brave & Balanced Fundraiser Facebook Group
👉 https://www.facebook.com/groups/braveandbalancedfundraiserBook a Brave & Balanced Breakthrough Call:
A personalized 1:1 session to support your inner clarity and fundraising wellbeing.
👉 https://calendly.com/vitalistcoaching/brave-balanced-breakthroughLearn more about Erin’s coaching & nervous-system based support:
VitalistCoaching.comConnect on Instagram:
@erinmcquadewright16 min - A Guided Meditation to Release Fundraising Anxiety
A calming, somatic reset to help you regulate, soften, and return to yourself.
This gentle guided meditation is your nervous-system reset—a place to soften the pressure, reconnect with yourself, and release the anxious momentum that fundraising can create. In this bonus episode, Erin leads you through a grounding practice designed to help you separate who you are from the sensations of anxiety moving through your body.
You’ll tune into love, safety, breath, and presence… and remember that anxiety is not a personal failing, but a messenger asking for compassion and attention.
This meditation will help you:
- Slow down an activated nervous system
- Meet anxious sensations with warmth instead of fear
- Reconnect with someone or something you love
- Create internal spaciousness when your thoughts feel tight
- Return to a grounded sense of “I am not my anxiety”
Use this anytime you feel overwhelmed, tense, or disconnected from yourself. Your inner world is yours to lead—and every time you pause to reset, you’re building the resilience that supports you, your donors, and your mission.
Send Erin a text
✨ Stay Connected & Continue Your Fundraising Growth
Listen to all episodes + subscribe:
https://thebraveandbalancedfundraiser.buzzsprout.comNewsletter Sign-up: The Brave & Balanced Note
Join the community:
The Brave & Balanced Fundraiser Facebook Group
👉 https://www.facebook.com/groups/braveandbalancedfundraiserBook a Brave & Balanced Breakthrough Call:
A personalized 1:1 session to support your inner clarity and fundraising wellbeing.
👉 https://calendly.com/vitalistcoaching/brave-balanced-breakthroughLearn more about Erin’s coaching & nervous-system based support:
VitalistCoaching.comConnect on Instagram:
@erinmcquadewright10 min
About The Brave and Balanced Fundraiser
From the publisher's feed
The Brave and Balanced Fundraiser is the podcast I wish had existed during my 15 years in fundraising. It’s a love offering to the people behind the mission—the professional fundraisers who…
give their hearts and energy every day to make the world better.
This show isn’t about strategy, metrics, or money. It’s about you—the human being doing the work. Each episode offers real tools and soulful conversations to help you regulate your nervous system, reconnect with your purpose, and renew your energy so you can lead with clarity, compassion, and courage.
If you’ve ever felt stretched thin, overworked, or caught in the constant pressure to perform, this podcast is your invitation to return home to yourself. Join me to learn how to cultivate balance, resilience, and authentic impact—from the inside out.
Full Episode Transcript: https://share.descript.com/view/fkFZpmNYF3v