When Anxiety Drives the Bus: How Fundraisers Lose Their Power — and How to Get It Back

Understanding your body’s stress response so you can fundraise from clarity instead of panic.

Anxiety shows up loudly in fundraising… tight chest, clenched gut, racing thoughts, shrinking creativity. In this episode, Erin shares a deeply personal story of fundraising during a budget crisis — and how her body’s ancient fight-or-flight wiring took over, narrowing her focus, driving unsustainable actions, and ultimately exacting a physical cost.

You’ll learn why anxiety feels so overwhelming, why it isn’t evidence that something is wrong with you, and how your nervous system is simply trying to keep you safe. Most importantly, you’ll discover how to recognize the signs, interrupt the panic cycle, and return to a grounded state where creative solutions, agency, and clarity live.

In this episode, you’ll hear:

• How fundraisers accidentally let anxiety run the show — and the cost of that
• What your fight-or-flight system is designed to do (and why it misfires at work)
• The physical symptoms that signal your body is asking for help
• Why anxiety is a feeling… not a fact
• A guided check-in to reconnect you with your body and breath
• The truth about fundraising from scarcity — and why it leads straight to burnout

This conversation is especially for fundraisers who feel like their work is “life-or-death” for the mission, their jobs, or their team. You are not alone — and your body has been trying to talk to you.

If this episode stirred something in you, keep an eye out for the companion meditation episode designed to help you regulate and return to center.

Book your 1:1 Brave and Balanced Breakthrough Coaching Session here: https://calendly.com/vitalistcoaching/brave-balanced-breakthrough

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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 McQuaid Wright. This is your space to breathe, realign, and reconnect with a 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. Today we're exploring how anxiety shows up in fundraising and what you can do about it. It is possible to have a good year in fundraising if anxiety is what's driving you, but there are costs to doing your work this way. I'm an example of both what can go wrong and how you can turn it around. I'm so excited to dive into this with you today. Anxiety is a feeling that shows up in our body sometimes as a clenched stomach or jaw, a knot in the throat, tingly hands or feet, or maybe even a headache. When we're in a state of anxiety, our ancient wiring kicks in that was passed down to us by our ancestors and encoded in our DNA. In our ancestors', time anxiety meant run or fight or hide because something bad was happening. Our ancestors' bodies shot out chemicals that would enable them to narrow their vision to see the predator on the horizon. It took blood and energy away from bodily functions that are unnecessary in an emergency like digestion and shot it into the arms and legs to facilitate getting outta there fast or putting up a fight. And guess what? We've got the same system our ancestors had. A lot of time has passed, but our bodies haven't changed that much. Yeah, we still feel the same crushing anxiety those ancestors felt only we're feeling it in our office in a climate controlled environment with electricity and maybe a cup of coffee in our hand, and we're looking at a budget shortfall that our fundraising needs to cover. Yikes. But the anxiety we feel is just as powerful, just as stimulating as if a lion were chasing us. It's meant to be a short term burst of adrenaline and cortisol to give us time to run away to safety, or enough power to lift a car off a little kid, but it's not actually sustainable. And if one budget shortfall leads to another and you are expected to keep closing that gap, your body might start talking to you. And if you don't listen to it and make adjustments, you can expect it to talk louder and louder until you can't ignore it. So this really was a story that I lived. I was new to fundraising and I really, really, really wanted to do a good job as a fundraiser. And my organization had lost a major source of funding and was facing a budget shortfall. My goal that was set at the beginning of the year was thrown out and a new higher goal was put there for me and. Just like my ancient ancestors on the Savannah that needed to narrow their focus to see the lion on the horizon that was coming after them. My focus narrowed to see only this emergency in front of me. I felt really anxious about it. I wondered what I was gonna do. I had a small team. But I was mostly at that point doing what had worked for previous people in my position, and I remember being so nervous and so scared. Now, I was a member of my local A FP chapter, but for some reason. And I think it had to do with social anxiety and fear of rejection. I didn't go to that group. I didn't go to a trusted Ally who was a local fundraiser that I could talk to. No. I went to an expert that I'd seen at a conference, I think, and I can't remember her name. She was so sweet, and I think I might have called her anyway, she was leading a. Conference session on creating a fundraising plan, a development plan for your organization. I had never had one before. I knew it was a sort of thing you should have or thing you should do, but my way was less structured and I felt like. It would be a really big lift for me to create a development plan. Better to use the energy I had to write this grant that was right in front of me, or make this ask of a potential donor that was right in front of me. So I didn't do a fundraising plan. Well, now I was in hot water. The goal had shot up. There were real people's jobs on the line, and I thought. Let me reach out to this lady who gave a talk about creating a fundraising plan, and I can't remember if I emailed her or if I called her, but she was so sweet and she had a small enough business that she got back to me herself and pointed me toward her ready-made product that I was able to plug and play, put my goals in for grant fundraising and. Individual giving, and I can't remember if we had memberships or an annual campaign, but I cobbled together those buckets and what I thought was realistic for us to raise, based on previous years, put together a campaign for the board to do emergency giving of their own. And I remember one member of the board invited me over to her business to talk about fundraising, and she had this shop, like a retail store, and we kind of sat down in the middle of it and she, oh, how can I be gracious about this? She was asking me for my ideas. And for how the money could be raised that we needed because she was trying to do a good job as a board member and be fiscally responsible for this organization. And the way I interpreted it was this is an interrogation. I am not a trusted professional. I am being rapid fire. Ask questions about. If you had to raise$200,000, who would you go to now go. You know, that was my interpretation of it. And what do you think this did for my anxiety? Dear friends, it shot it through the roof. I was triggered. She was probably triggered and. I walked away with the impression that this was do or die, that my job was on the line, even though it probably wasn't, but that fast action was needed, and my gut was clenched all the time because anxiety and fear were driving the bus. Of what I did every day, and so I reached out donors, responded to my please, even though, uh, they were really gracious with me, I'll say that they were really gracious with this anxious triggered fundraiser who was. It. You know, I was probably more calm than I than I am thinking at this future date looking back. But the way I remember it was sort of like a comic book of someone who had put their finger in a light bulb, light plug and hair standing up, if not on fire. Like, please, please, please, can you help us? And things came through. Some organization that did a golf tournament every year picked us as their organization that they would support. We got a grant proposal in front of a new funder. I was writing my little tushy off. I think we got some support and the grant writing. We got a consultant to help us source some grants that we could apply for, and we got some and we didn't get others. And I think in the end, our organization raised more that year by 30%, and I felt really proud of that. Little did I know that that would be, that would be the kind of the floor for future fundraising goals. I had really done a number on myself by. Pulling out all the stops and you know, there was some, there was some potential damage there with donors as well because like the boy who cried wolf, like, this is an emergency. Okay. People would come through in short order and they were gracious about it. And lovely. You know, that fund raise who were there before me had done such good work of cultivating relationships that it wasn't. A cold ask for most people, but you can't do that. That's not sustainable. It's not sustainable on an organizational level budgetarily to do, to plan for a 30% jump in fundraising and for that to be, you know, maintained year after year. And it wasn't sustainable for my body. I was diagnosed shortly after that with stage four endometriosis, which is a whole thing. But the But the result, remember how I said I was clenching my gut earlier? Yeah. This was that on steroids and it was like. You know, like somebody had put wallpaper on my insides and they were stuck together so I couldn't even stand up straight. Um, I found a tremendous surgeon who really helped me out. Um, but the point is my body was talking to me and was doing this over years. That anxiety and gut clenching were not really good for me. And this situation. I don't believe this situation at work caused my illness. However, I think it did speed up the timeline that this needed to get taken care of. So I want you to pause wherever you are unless you're driving. I'd like you to close your eyes for a moment. And just check in with your body.'cause this story is intense and maybe it's reminding you of something that's happened in your life as a fundraiser. So just notice what's going on in your body right now. Are you feeling tense in your belly? Maybe your chest or your brow or your jaw? Just take a breath. As if you could breathe into that area that feels tight. And all I want you to do is just offer your attention to that area that feels constricted or contracted, just for this moment, allow it to be here. And notice. So I'm gonna move on, but I'm gonna put, I'm gonna upload another episode that's just gonna be a meditation for you to listen to if this is activating for you or if you feel like, Hmm, this is, there's something going on here in my body that I could, that I could work with. To feel less anxious. I'm gonna upload that as a separate episode for you so that you have it as a go-to and you can come back to it as a resource as needed. You don't have to wait Wade through this episode to find it. What I wish I'd known as that fresh new fundraiser who really wanted to do a good job. Is this, anxiety is a feeling. It's not a fact. By using anxiety as my driver, remember how I said it was driving the bus of my actions around this, this fundraising year. By using anxiety as my driver, I narrowed my vision and I was less creative. You know, I was in my sympathetic nervous system response, which is run, fight, hide. It's the opposite of the parasympathetic system, which helps the body, rest and digest. So when we are in the sympathetic fight or flight nervous system state, our vision actually narrows. We see physically we have less peripheral vision. And creatively we see fewer possibilities. Not a great time for me to be less creative. And maybe you've seen this in your life when you're anxious or you're having a fight with someone in your words, just kind of go away. You, you get dumber when you're in that state. It's true. And. To its credit. My body showed up for the sprint. It really served me to push through in this uncertain time in my organization, in my fundraising, my body was there for me. It showed up for the sprint, but I harmed it more than I knew by doing that. And I do think there was a part of me that thought, oh, this is just how I am now. This is just how I fundraise now. Super go-getter, afraid of everything collapsing. I'll use this to help me be productive. And the crazy thing was that that anxiety was trying to offer me safety. Because I had a belief that if I push like crazy, I'll be safe. I won't get fired. My friends won't get fired. My organization will be safe. The people it serves, the constituents that benefit from this mission will be safe. But that was a misunderstanding. You know, I thought that safety came from others. And it could be given to me or it could be taken away, hence the feeling of anxiety. But what I wish I had known is that safety is always here. I just didn't see it. I didn't know where to look for it. So I would say fundraising from anxiety and scarcity and panic can get you through a pinch, but it's also how we burn out. And this is a real thing in our field. The fundraising turnover rate is 16 to 24 months, and that is too short. That is too much turnover for you to be putting up with finding a new job every couple of years. That's tiring. It's exhausting. It's too much turnover for organizations that have to train, recruit, find, wait for new people to get up to speed, and it's a pain in the neck for donors who are just revolving door happened and they've gotta learn a new person's name and scale up with a new fundraiser. So that's why I started this podcast. It's a big reason why, because this turnover rate is pointing to a systemic problem within our field, and I wanna be able to offer tools so that we don't have to do all of our work from an unresourced place. And look, fundraising from anxiety is a choice you're free to make. If you wanna make that choice, if it's working for you, great. But for a lot of us, our body starts talking to us and saying, this is not working for a lot of us. We gotta make a change. Something's gotta give. And what got us here to this point will not be what gets us to our next chapter. So I would invite you to get curious about what it's costing you to choose anxiety as your home base from which you're fundraising. What is it costing you? What would be possible for you if you already felt safe, if you knew? That you were safe, how much could you achieve if you knew that your safety didn't come from hitting the goal? I mean, really, how would it feel in your body to be totally secure and make an ask from that place? How do you think a donor would respond to an ask that was calmly and thoughtfully made? Explaining the budget shortfall and giving them the opportunity to be the hero rather than a rushed and panicked ask that's not been fully thought through. You'll hit some of the targets by letting anxiety drive you there, but you're gonna miss a lot of the targets as well. And for us to have that wide open focus that sees all the possibilities and can be totally creative in the moment, we have to have a level of calm. We have to be in our parasympathetic nervous system state. We have to be able to soothe ourselves and bring ourselves to a balanced state. In order to have that wide range of focus that serves us so well because the donor's nervous system can pick up on what our nervous system is up to. And just like, you know, when you're on a date and somebody is a little too overeager, you feel that and it's like, Ooh, get me outta here. I remember I went to a church. That was by my house years and years and years ago to check it out, walked over there, went to a service, and my husband, God bless him, I don't know why he said this, but he mentioned to the greeter at the door on the way out when we were saying goodbye, he mentioned that I am a singer, and I mean to tell you, she was so excited about the choir having a potential new member that she practically was like pleading and that said, you know, she hadn't, it didn't have anything to do with me, my skills as a singer. It had to do with her mindset of scarcity and the fact of the matter is. The ask she was making for me to come back and sing with them was a big fat no for me because of how she was asking. It was telling me that there was something majorly wrong, and if I would join that team, I would be joining a team that was in disarray or distress. And that kind of bore out what I saw when I was in that church. There were like three or four members of the choir and another five in the church. It was clearly struggling as a community and her, please, please, please come back. Um, request was pretty easy for me to turn down because of the energy that she made it with. Now. I am sure you are a professional. You're not making asks like that saying, please, please, please. But on an energetic level, it is possible to feel that way and to be more calm on the outside level, and the donors are still able to pick up on what's happening on the inside. So I hope this episode. Is helpful to you in considering how anxiety may or may not be showing up in your fundraising. And as I mentioned earlier, I'll release a brief meditation that you can do in the midst of your new year implementation work that will help you resolve some of this anxiety and be more aware of it when it's in the room so that it doesn't have to be running the show.

26:48

All right, friends, let's land this together. We've covered a lot today, and so I wanna leave you with a few key takeaways you can carry into your fundraising life. First, anxiety is a body event, not a character flaw. That clench in your gut, your jaw, your throat, that's your ancient wiring, trying to protect you, not proof that you're bad at your job, it's your nervous system doing exactly what it was designed to do in the Savannah. It just happens to be firing in an office now instead of in front of a lion. Second, anxiety can get you through a sprint, but it's a terrible long-term business model. You can have a strong fundraising year powered by panic and cortisol. I did. It worked on paper, but it narrowed my vision, drained my creativity and strained donor relationships, and it took a real toll on my body. It's not sustainable for you, for your organization, or for your donors. Third, when anxiety is driving the bus, you actually see fewer possibilities in sympathetic nervous system mode, fight, flight, or freeze. Your vision literally narrows. You get more tactical and less creative. That's the worst possible time to be designing campaigns that solving budget problems or having nuanced donor conversations, calm, expands your field of vision. Panic shrinks it. Fourth, your safety does not live in the fundraising goal as long as your brain believes, I'm only safe if we hit this number. Anxiety will keep the volume turned all the way up. The deeper truth is this, safety is something you can cultivate from the inside out. From that place, you can make cleaner, calmer, more grounded, asks that donors actually want to say yes to. Okay, so here are a couple questions I'd love for you to sit with this week. What is it costing you physically, emotionally, relationally, to let anxiety be your home base in fundraising and what might become possible if you already knew you were safe before you ever opened your mouth to make an ask? If today's episode stirred something in your body, remember you don't have to white knuckle this alone. I'm gonna be releasing a separate short meditation episode you can use anytime you notice anxiety creeping into your fundraising day. Think of it as a little pocket resource you can come back to whenever you need to reset. And if you wanna talk about what came up for you, join us in the Brave and Balanced fundraiser facebook group. It's a space where you don't have to pretend you're fine, and where we're all practicing doing this work from a more resourced, grounded place. And if you've got a fundraising bestie who you think would really benefit from this episode, please share it with them. Thanks for listening. Take a deep breath, unclench your jaw, and I'll see you in the next episode.