We’re sitting down with Mallory Erickson, a seasoned executive coach, fundraising consultant, and the founder of The Power Partners Formula™. With her expertise in empowering nonprofit leaders to raise more from their current donor base, Mallory brings a fresh perspective on leveraging data and emotional intelligence to drive impactful donor engagement.
In this conversation, Mallory Erickson delves into the challenges nonprofits face with burnout and a scarcity mindset, which can make embracing change seem daunting. However, Mallory emphasizes that overcoming these hurdles is essential for fostering innovation and growth. She discusses her approach to parenting and the decision to share aspects of her personal life online, highlighting the importance of authenticity in both personal and professional spheres. Mallory also shares her journey of addressing burnout in the nonprofit sector and the need to integrate wellness and genuine connection into fundraising practices. By breaking down overwhelming tasks into smaller steps and making one-degree shifts, she offers practical strategies for nonprofit professionals to overcome resistance and move towards positive change.
This is her second time joining us on the podcast, and we're thrilled to have her back! Be sure to listen to her previous episode, in which she shared her thoughts on Fundraising.AI and the future of fundraising. Listen to her first episode here.
She shares:
- Integrating personal and professional aspects of life can lead to a more authentic and fulfilling experience.
- Addressing burnout in the nonprofit sector requires finding ways to fundraise that feel aligned and embody one's full self.
- Overwhelming and scarcity mindsets can hinder creativity and prevent nonprofit professionals from taking risks and trying new approaches.
- Creating awareness of one's emotions and practicing self-regulation can lead to greater clarity and capacity for change.
- Breaking down daunting tasks into smaller steps and making one-degree shifts can help overcome resistance and facilitate progress.
Show chapters
- 00:00 Introduction and Catching Up
- 09:01 Addressing Burnout in the Nonprofit Sector
- 14:10 The Scariest Part of the Journey
- 19:01 Challenges Faced by Nonprofit Professionals
- 28:47 Breaking Down Daunting Tasks
- 36:16 Mallory's Love Letter to the Fundraising Sector
Meet our guest
Transcript
Ronnie Richard
So Mallory, last time you were on our show was about a year ago, and I had to miss doing that one. And I think in the three or four years I've been doing this―Justin, correct me if I'm wrong―but I think that's the only episode I've missed. So I wanted to get the first question in here since I didn't get a chance. That's right. Signed, dated, notarized even.
Justin McCord
Which means that I gave him permission. I gave him permission. To be clear, he's got a permission slip that's signed.
Ronnie Richard
So, I wanted to ask you a question about parenting. And it's funny that we were just talking about this before recording. And I also want to preface this by saying this isn't, like, the stereotypical question that women get of like, how do you balance being a mom and a professional? It's not that. So, on your social channels and in your speaking in public, you're very open and honest about your life and your things you struggle with. You also share a lot about your kids and your family. And I'm just curious, like, is that a difficult decision that you made as you were thinking about this? Or, like, how much private to share versus being authentic and who you are? Like, is that something you had to think about in a way, or did it just kind of come naturally to you, or what?
Mallory Erickson
Yeah, I mean, I think it's a little bit of both. Like, yes, it came really naturally to me because I think being my full self sort of means that I feel really integrated. And so, a lot of the things that I do are related to the world I want for my kids. They're related to things I'm thinking about in motherhood and just because, like, I'm a full human, and I want to be my full human self in all of the things that I do. And I don't really box very … I don't, like, have containers for the parts of me. They are just all me. And definitely, sharing things about my kids publicly was a conversation with my husband, and like, having content online about them or their photos, like, that was a conscious decision that we made together about that being okay. You know, Emmy, my five-year-old, when she was three, did her first podcast episode with me for GivingTuesday. Now it's become a little bit of a ritual. People don't actually know this, but anytime I post about her online, I ask her permission; I show her the photos first. I know that consent with a five-year-old, you could question me for that, but she's involved in that decision-making process. So I … and sometimes, like, she changes the photo. And so, I don't know, I feel like I, you know, my motherhood and this business were birthed in similar timelines and in COVID when everything was really integrated too. And so I think then it would have been this really conscious thing to separate my life in a way that, that was not the decision that felt, like, good to me.
Justin McCord
It's the, dadgum, and it's the perfect freaking answer, Mallory, because it's like, it is, it's, that's you. Like, that's you, and I have had lots of conversations about like, you don't have someone doing this stuff for you. Like, it is you, it is you living out loud. And I love that you ask Emmy for permission around her image being shared and those sorts of things. I have seen now far more often my wife with our 15-year-old, and it's a flip of the coin: Sometimes he's just having a bad day, and he's like, no, I don't want it on your ‘gram, mom. No, right? Like, so funny the way that that sort of thing plays out. You are the third person in the 100-plus episodes of this thing, by the way, to appear more than once, the third person. So that's kind of fun. It's rare that we have repeat folks. We're gonna link back to the conversation from a year ago, which again, talked about a little bit of your ...
Mallory Erickson
Mmm. My God, I feel so honored.
Justin McCord
… a little bit of your formative path and then a lot about fundraising.AI as that was launching last year. I want to dig into a little bit of what you shared about being a whole person and the integrated way that you show up. And I think the question is, how did you come to the idea of shouldering burnout with the sector? Like, how did that … you experienced burnout, and most people―maybe that's unfair to say most people, a lot of people have more of a flight than fight whenever it comes to that. You decided to shoulder it for the sector, like ...
Mallory Erickson
Mm-hmm. Hmm.
Justin McCord
I don't mean what were you thinking in a negative way, but like, what, like honestly, what were you thinking in making that choice?
Mallory Erickson
You know, it's so interesting. This is the … Nathan Chappelle, like, our mutual friend, also recently wrote something on one of my LinkedIn posts, like, you, you've dedicated your life to like, addressing kind of burnout in the sector. And I really sat with that comment because what I realized is that I kind of accidentally backed into it. Like, what I wanted was, yes, I hit my own burnout, but then my way out of that burnout was around finding ways to fundraise that felt aligned with me, where I felt embodied, where I felt like my full self. And in doing that, a fundraising, that way, it felt really good to me. And so I have prevented burnout because I was like, living in my fullness.
It doesn't mean I never overworked. It doesn't mean I was never tired. It doesn't mean I didn't overcommit sometimes. It doesn't mean … but I didn't hit that same level of burnout ever again because of this integration that I found through these different coaching modalities, habit and behavior design modalities, and then alignment fundraising. So then when I sort of put that, when I put my fundraising practices into a program for fundraisers, my North Star was not cure burnout, right? It was like help fundraisers feel better, and raise more money, and stop hounding people for money, and stop having fundraising feel like this cringey thing that we all feel super weird about and this sort of like necessary evil. Like, it doesn't have to be that way. It can be really meaningful, and fulfilling and sacred.
And then what I found was that in Power Partners―my program that teaches people this way of fundraising―was that it was having big mental health implications for the fundraisers. And what's interesting is inside the program, phase zero is just the executive coaching and habit, behavior design stuff. And I was finding people were having huge fundraising success just from that phase of the program. And so that kind of, like, set me off on this like, path of being like, wait a second, this organization just moved their budget from 200,000 to $700,000 just from these executive coaching tools.
And then I started to learn more about, like, go deeper into the way that those tools mapped against Polyvagal theory, which is like a nervous system, kind of like trauma understanding. And I started to interview on what the fundraising psychologists, and therapists and behavioral scientists, and I was just insanely curious. And I was just like, there is something here. Like, what is happening? What if the answer to all of these fundraising challenges is inside of us? What if it's not a template and another strategy and another.
And then when I started to realize that all of the things we say and tell fundraisers to do are actually impossible if we are burnt out, that we cannot connect as humans because burnout is protection mode. We are in survival mode. We are not open to connection. We cannot trust other people. We cannot laugh or like, feel fully, like … right? We are completely shut down until we go out there, and we tell fundraisers like, just build relationships, and it's like, “How?” And so my, like―this is very long answer, but like, I never was like, like burnout is my thing. Like, of course I always have cared about wellness and people being well and whole because that's just, like, kind of my, I don't know, orientation, but, but I never realized the core necessity in addressing it to both make our people well and bring financial stability to this sector.
Justin McCord
Okay, so since you set off on that journey―and some folks could hear that answer, and hear that response, and think that it's been this incredible path of eurekas, which it kinda has been, but that's not to say that there aren't bad days along the way. Like, what's been the scariest part of the journey the last four years …
Mallory Erickson
Hmm.
Justin McCord
… as this thing has been birthed, and what's your go-to to self-regulate when the scaries start to elevate?
Mallory Erickson
Hmm. I think the scariest or hardest part is creating, trying to create, an environment of certainty for my team when what I'm exploring is really uncertain. So like, I think people always ask me like, what's my business plan or where am I gonna be in five years? And I'm like, y 'all, I don't know. I wanna solve this problem, and I do not know what that looks like, and what it looks like this year is gonna be different in two to three years. And I'm gonna try everything I can to improve the lives of fundraisers and address this epidemic in our sector.
And to do that in a really meaningful way that scales, I need staff members, team members in my business that are not just down to like, hitch a ride on my like, wild goose chase, you know? And so that to me has really been, like, the hardest thing is like, my own ... I joke a lot that I'm like the cart and the horse. And like, sometimes I'd be like, whoa, Mallory, like, scale it back. Like, there are a lot of people who are depending on you to create some stability over here, you know, like, don't just create a coloring book in 10 days and send it out to, like, the sector.That’s right. I … and so like, that, that for me is like, kind of, this, the, I don't know if “scary” is the right word, but like, the hardest thing for me is like, is that ...
Justin McCord
Yeah.
Mallory Erickson
… I have so many self-regulation tools, and it's hard to pick one. I just was telling you guys before we hit record, I just had my second day of kindergarten drop off, and I came home, and I could feel my body dysregulated. Like, I was just like, shaking a little bit, and I could like, feel the emotion, like, kind of bubbling up in my throat. And I knew I had to get on a call in like 15 minutes, and there were other things I was hoping to do before that call. And I was just like, Mallory, stop, lay down. And I literally just, like, laid down in the middle of my family room on the floor. And I was like, let yourself cry for a minute. And I just like, cried for two minutes. Crying is a great self-regulation tool. I just, like, let the feelings kind of, like, wash over me. I felt my body on the floor. I like, let myself be a human. And then I like, kind of, slowly sat up. And I was like, okay, okay, okay.
And so I think sometimes it's about reminding myself in my head that uncertainty is an important part of the work that I'm doing. So if the uncertainty gets too high and I start to feel dysregulated about not knowing where the money is gonna come from or how I'm gonna pay everybody or whatever, that can get really scary. Just, like, reminding myself, Mallory, you've been here before, you've figured it out, you always figure it out. So sometimes it's like those like self-coaching, sometimes it's in my body. Yeah.
Justin McCord
I think the self-coaching or the verbalizing it for yourself is another part of what you just said that I find to be very powerful and clearly, even as evidenced by what you shared of some of your experience this morning, like, sometimes when you say those things out loud, you are giving yourself permission to feel a certain thing or to find a path out of a certain thing. So that, yeah, thank you for, thanks for reminding me of that.
Mallory Erickson
Hmm.
Ronnie Richard
Mallory, I want to ask about … so we've asked you some questions to be very introspective. You were at an event that we had a couple of months ago, and you spoke to some of our clients and shared a lot of these ideas on how the brain works and this idea of moving through change. I'm curious, through not just that event but other opportunities you've had to speak with people at nonprofits and people who work in fundraising, what's, kind of, a read that you have on them and what's holding them back? What struggles are they having right now in their work particularly?
Mallory Erickson
Yeah. Okay. So, it's so interesting. The last three words that you said, or two words that you said, around like, in their work, particularly, because as you were talking, what I realized― back to your original question around my motherhood―is that if you're trying to address the challenges that you're experiencing or find solutions that really work, you can't really compartmentalize the same way if you're including everything in your brain and body, right? So, like me being dysregulated from kindergarten drop-off is 100 % gonna impact the coaching call that I go on next if I don't recognize that that's not a container, that I'm not chopping off half my arm and putting it somewhere.
And so, your question about what are nonprofits dealing with right now? I mean, I think the level of overwhelm that people are experiencing, both from their work lives, whether it's because they are understaffed and doing multiple jobs―we've always worn too many hats, but we know that there's a lot of vacancies in nonprofits right now, and a lot of folks are covering multiple roles―so whether it's like, overwhelmed because of the number of things they’re being asked to manage, whether it's pressure coming from fundraising expectations, whether it's the amount of notifications going off on their phone because everything is just going bananas, or it's the fear mongering on social, you know, around different things happening in our political environment, like, overwhelm impacts us, all of us, right? And it layers on top of each other. So you might say, I actually don't have too much work right now on my plate. So why do I still feel overwhelmed?
Well, it could be because of all of the other things in your life that are creating overwhelm, right? Like, you don't, because overwhelm is in your body, so like, you don't get to just, like, turn that off and then, like, go to work and feel like clarity and light and all of those things, right? And so, I think the level of overwhelm that people are experiencing right now in their daily lives is creating a lot of paralysis in our sector.
Like, when we are overwhelmed, we start to go into more protection modes, right? That's where we see a lot more like, freeze or flight, which like, I think in the nonprofit sector looks like shiny-object syndrome, or we see fight, which is like, why did that organization get money instead of us? Right? So like, our nervous system shows up, actually, in all these different ways we see in our sector. And when we're in those modes, we don't want to take risks. We don't want to try new things. We don't want … we want to protect ourselves from any potential, like, criticism. We don't want to do anything wrong. Things feel very binary. We're like, there's either a right way or wrong way.
So one of the things I noticed a lot at our time together―which I was so grateful to be at that event, to get to speak at that event, to get to sit with those nonprofits and hear them troubleshoot together and share resources and ideas. And I also heard these two words together that you hear a lot in our sector: “Yeah, but ...” Right? Like, yeah, that's a great idea, but ... And what I saw in there was not that this thing is impossible. What I saw in there was that there's resistance, and there's fear, and the “but” was like, “Yeah, but I don't have the capacity to be open to that right now.” Not, “but it won't work for us,” even though sometimes that's what people said. What I really heard in there was like, “Yeah, but I can't get myself to try something new right now.” And just the pressure and expectations, I think, as people are seeing challenges in their fundraising, they're holding so tight. They're trying to plug a bucket that they feel like is leaking. Those … that's not where we are creative, or building real relationships, or developing engagement or …. We're not willing to step away from the leaky bucket for long enough to realize that there's actually so much more water and full buckets five steps away, but like, our fingers are in all the holes. Like, how can we leave? And I feel like that was, like, a lot of what I felt and, saw totally understandably, but like, in those conversations.
Justin McCord
I remember reading a book―this was a couple of years ago, I need to find it and probably reread it―and it was called “The Pandemic Population.” And it was about elementary school students whose lives were upended, as all of our lives were, with the pandemic. And the author cited research, even at this point―this is probably early 2021―about …
Mallory Erickson
Hmm. Hmm.
Justin McCord
… comparisons in the impact of the pandemic on, you know, adolescent children at that time to the impact of the Great Depression on people. And in terms of how it flares scarcity, like, that's a big result is just the upheaval of scarcity. And to your point about resistance and fear …
Mallory Erickson
Hmm. Mm -hmm.
Justin McCord
… and, yeah, “buts,” we are fighting, as nonprofit professionals, we’re fighting noble fights and surrounded by Chicken Little headlines about declining trust, and number of households that are giving declining and retention woes, like, there is, we build, like, Lego castles around us of cans, and that's hard to break through and break out of.
Mallory Erickson
Mmm. Yeah, yeah, and I think part of that requires us sometimes to hold, to hold nuance and duality, right? Like, we can say … something I say a lot when I speak is like, look, material scarcity in the nonprofit sector is a real thing. Many people are dealing with material scarcity in their lives, in their organizations, with the folks they work with inside their organization. Yes, and scarcity mindset is an additional layer of scarcity that holds us back from being able to find solutions to material scarcity. And we need, I think―and this is true with our level of overwhelm, right? We're seeing the level of polarization in topics and in comment sections on social media, right? Like, everybody is just like these, what do they call them? Keyboard warriors. And what you see in a lot of that is total binary thinking, right?
And what we need is to hold nuance, right? To say, like, these things, yes, it might be true that this decline is happening here, and some organizations are seeing this, or, and we're also seeing growth over here. I said to somebody recently, I was like, I don't remember what this was about, but I was like, you know, think about the transformation from, like, a caterpillar to a butterfly. If the butterfly was like, yeah, yeah, I wanna be a butterfly, but like, I wanna keep my, like, caterpillar body. Like, that butterfly's not flying anywhere, you know? Like, that's way too heavy. So we think we're like, I wanna keep my, you know, response rate on this thing, like, exactly as it is. And I want butterfly wings.
Justin McCord
Mm.
Ronnie Richard
As you, as you think about this challenge, it, it seems in a lot of ways that it's difficult for people to, I guess, think about how to get from point A to point B because in some ways they're seeing it as a huge leap in your, in your coaching, and, and maybe, you know, this could be in your new book that's coming out soon. Like, is part of it ...
Mallory Erickson
Mm.
Ronnie Richard
… helping people break down into smaller steps or walking them, like, how do you get them over that mindset of, “This seems like such a daunting task, and I don't even know where to begin”?
Mallory Erickson
Hmm. So in the book, I don't actually go into this. The book … what I focus on, though, is around like, some emotional regulation tools that help down regulate your nervous system so that you can have more clarity. So I think when we are feeling overwhelmed, we're like―exactly to your point―like, we can't see the path, right? We're like, okay, here's where I wanna go, but like, I have no idea how I'm gonna get there.
Ronnie Richard
Okay.
Mallory Erickson
And when our nervous system can ground down, we can start to have a lot more clarity around what that next step would be. But something I teach―and I just couldn't fit it into the book―is around like, habit and behavior design―taught by, you know, BJ Fogg―is making the actions smaller, and smaller, and smaller, and smaller and smaller, right? So if you can't figure out … and then combine that with a coaching strategy, which is around one-degree shifts.
So something we talk about a lot in coaching is like, making one-degree shifts, right? Often we think about something, we're like, okay, like, I'm gonna have a completely new blah, blah, blah. It's like, no, no, no. How can you make a one-degree shift towards being a little bit more authentic? What would it look like for you to create a piece of content that was one-degree more authentic? Is it about where you're recording that content? Is it about how many people are reviewing that content? Is it about you not deleting that content after it doesn't get a certain amount of likes in a certain period of time? What does one degree look like for you? And so I think it's like, make the action easier to do and then also figure out, like, get curious around what's a … if you're like, okay, I can make the action easier to do, but I still don't know what the action is, then ask yourself, what's a one-degree shift that could insert whatever that goal is for you.
Justin McCord
I think our friend Tim Lockey is going to take and apply that to his LinkedIn habits as he is constantly chasing Mallory and LinkedIn for, you know, stuff. Okay, so that's not in the book.
Mallory Erickson
It's not in the book. I talk about one-degree shifts a little bit. I talk about one-degree shifts a little bit, but I think like, I didn't go into habit and behavior design because it was sort of a whole other, a whole other piece. But in the book, I talk a lot about my coaching framework, really helping people understand ...
Justin McCord
It's not a, luck. Yeah.
Mallory Erickson
… the energy that they're showing up to different things with. I talk about the Energy Leadership Index, which is through my coach certification program, how that applies to fundraising, really, the very first step in any of this is awareness around how we're feeling, and how, how we're feeling and even that we have feelings. I mean, gosh, when I just watch these fundraisers, like, running from thing to thing. I'm like, have, have we felt our bodies today? Can you remember what you ate? Like, do you know? And this was, for me, like, no, right? I was so disembodied. And so the very first step is just awareness of ourselves and then tiny little bits of space. And that's not an hour break. It's like, is there space between your ruminating thoughts in your mind? Is there space between something happening and you beating yourself up about it happening? Is there space between a meeting for one minute for you to just close your eyes and be like, okay, what am I walking into right now? Is there space to reflect on something? Is there space to be like, notice how you're feeling about something? Those tiny little moments, they actually are what create the capacity then for us to do the other things.
Justin McCord
Is it fair to say―I partially want you to say no whenever I ask this question, but I know that you're not going to―is it fair to say that the book is Mallory's, kind of, love letter to the fundraising sector of what you want it to be, but like, contained? Like, is that the right way to think about, how you think about the book?
Mallory Erickson
You know ...
Justin McCord
She's gonna say no, Ronnie. She's about to say no.
Mallory Erickson
No, wait, wait, wait, wait.
Ronnie Richard
She's gonna say it in a very good way that doesn't say no.
Mallory Erickson
Wait. It is ... What it is, it is in between a love letter and a breakup letter. But not me breaking up, but not me breaking up with the sector, right? But it's like, it is not, it is not all sunshine and rainbows. There's a lot of really hard things in there, and it is a love letter because I believe loving somebody means saying the truth with kindness and care, but it doesn't mean just making everybody feel good all the time because that's not real life.
And to say the things … I've been thinking a lot recently, and this really is making me feel kind of emotional thinking about this. Somebody else asked me recently, like, why I, why I'm willing to be so vulnerable about my experience or like, say all these things about how I felt as a fundraiser and like, use that to guide how I talk about things? I said, you know, I feel like I'm in a real position of, like, privilege, right? Like, I'm not inside an organization right now. I don't have a board, you know, who's going to be embarrassed about whatever it is that I said or did, like, I'm completely on my own. And the only thing that I care about is making this sector better.
So I, you know … and I don't feel like a martyr in any kind of way because I feel a tremendous amount of choice and autonomy around this, but I feel like I want to say all the things that everybody's feeling and doesn't feel like they're allowed to say. And that's what's inside that book.
Justin McCord
Can't wait. Okay, so the book is called “What the Fundraising: Embracing and Enabling People the People Behind the Purpose.” And so, it's out October 1st. People can go to malloryerickson.com and follow her on LinkedIn, in droves, take that, Tim. And then that way you'll get up to date on, like, pre-orders and all those sorts of things.
Mallory, you know that we think the world of you, and we are so appreciative of how you embrace the, I say, the nobility of this space, this sector that we're in, and we're so glad that you do what you do.
Mallory Erickson
I'm so grateful for you guys. Love y 'all. I love what you're doing for the sector. I think you give me motivation and inspiration to be bold and to also―you guys do it too―say the hard thing, call the thing out, be … stand in, take stances that are necessary, and scary and that maybe not everybody is gonna like but because you believe in what this sector can be.
And I think that's why I love being friends with you guys, love working with you guys, is because I think we both believe in what's possible, and we wanna help be, like, pillars of change, and comfort and partnership in getting us there.
Justin McCord
I agree. I don't know what else to say after that.
Mallory Erickson
I'm just grateful for you guys.
Justin McCord
Ditto, ditto, ditto. Okay, we'll talk to you soon.
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