Key Takeaways: Successful fundraising is more than just strategy—it begins with your internal world. Your mindset, emotional energy, and unconscious patterns play a major role in how you connect with others and inspire support. We all have sub-personalities—like the pleaser, perfectionist, or rebel—that try to protect us. These “parts” aren’t bad, but they can unintentionally undermine your efforts if left unchecked. Awareness is key to working with them, not against them. In fundraising, how yo...
Jul 10, 2025•35 min•Ep. 208
Key Takeaways: Receptivity is an intentional strength. True openness toward money, ideas, feedback, or kindness is not passive. It is an active, rewired mindset that can be shaped over time, despite early conditioning. Receptive leaders influence through presence, not pressure. Leadership rooted in listening, collaboration, and invitation creates space for growth and impact, far more than force or control ever could. The practice begins in small moments. Noticing your receiving patterns, saying ...
Jul 03, 2025•28 min•Ep. 207
Key Takeaways: Welcome criticism as much as praise; both of these are other people’s opinions of us. They get to have their opinions, and not everything that people think about you is your business. People will only respond to what you did and say if they care enough to do so. Don’t put peace on a pedestal. Instead, balance peace and conflict. When you sacrifice the conflict for peace at all costs, we will only end up multiplying and creating more explosive conflicts. Creating space for conflict...
Jun 19, 2025•21 min•Ep. 206
Key Takeaways: Crises don't cancel out other needs. Multiple truths, missions, and urgencies can coexist. When we reject scarcity thinking, we make room for shared impact. Donors are not fragile. They can care deeply about more than one issue and often feel more compelled to give when reminded of what truly matters. Let them decide what resonates. Fundraising isn’t about taking, it’s about offering a meaningful way to contribute. Even in challenging times, inviting people to give can be an act o...
Jun 12, 2025•20 min•Ep. 205
Key Takeaways: Your reality is a reflection of your thoughts. If you want different outcomes, start by cultivating different thoughts. Words follow thoughts. The confidence and clarity you seek in your communication begin in your mindset, not in a perfect script or message. Limiting beliefs are mental loops you can rewire. Recognize recurring negative narratives and actively replace them with new, empowering ones. Leadership influence starts internally. The way you perceive yourself sets the ton...
Jun 05, 2025•30 min•Ep. 204
With 25+ years guiding Fortune 100s, start‑ups, and non-profits through change management, culture transformation, and engagement, Dr. Patrick Farran, founder of Ad Lucem Group, former Consulting Director at SAS Institute, and former Notre Dame MBA faculty, brings impactful insight into purposeful leadership. Key Takeaways: Purpose drives performance. Focus on the "why" and "who" to align teams with a clear mission, not just tasks and tactics. Leadership is a shared journey. Involve team members...
May 29, 2025•32 min•Ep. 203
Key Takeaways: Your presence and emotional frequency speak louder than what you say—people remember how you made them feel, not just what you said. Conscious leaders intentionally cultivate their energetic state, understanding that influence stems from within and radiates outward. Effective connection comes from meeting others where they are—validating their state rather than trying to pull them into yours. Your energetic baseline influences every area of life. Elevating it naturally attracts al...
May 22, 2025•46 min•Ep. 202
Key Takeaways: Create engaging experiences rather than logistically exhausting one-off events, with meaningful follow-up and sponsor involvement for effective event planning. Treat events as part of the donor journey, aligning activities before, during, and after to support awareness, interest, connection, and action stages. Meet participants' seven emotional needs (safety, pleasure, positive outcomes, connection, authentic communication, vision, and interconnectedness) for unforgettable experie...
May 15, 2025•31 min•Ep. 201
Sean Littman is the Founder and CEO of GiveSuite.com, a dynamic company at the forefront of nonprofit software and marketing. With a decade of experience in the digital marketing landscape, Sean has a proven track record of building and scaling successful ventures. His expertise lies in strategic and unconventional marketing, and he has a knack for problem-solving and developing exceptional solutions. Sean's strength lies in his ability to deeply understand people and their needs through insight...
May 08, 2025•31 min•Ep. 200
Kim Faircloth: A seasoned professional with over 30 years of experience in conflict resolution coaching and mediation, leadership development, and executive coaching. As the owner of Integrated Conflict Solutions, LLC, she empowers individuals and organizations to effectively manage conflicts and enhance employee engagement. A certified coach and trained mediator, Dr. Faircloth has guided thousands in addressing workplace conflicts. Her expertise spans roles such as ombudsman, workforce strategi...
May 01, 2025•44 min•Ep. 199
Key Takeaways: Empathy and validation are essential skills that can be learned and practiced to strengthen relationships, foster trust, and build healthier communities. True validation doesn’t require agreement, it’s about acknowledging another’s feelings and experiences through listening, reflection, affirmation, and, when welcomed, offering insight. Effective validation practices include giving full attention, avoiding quick fixes, using empathetic language, and showing genuine interest in bot...
Apr 24, 2025•40 min•Ep. 198
Key Takeaways: Lunch and Learn is a strategic, low-pressure event to move potential donors through awareness, interest, connection, and action stages by providing a welcoming, informative one-hour introduction to your organization. Consistently host monthly events with personal invitations from board members, volunteers, and donors, focusing on high-level impact stories and testimonials rather than detailed program descriptions. Create an engaging session that allows attendees to introduce thems...
Apr 17, 2025•29 min•Ep. 197
Steven Screen is an experienced fundraiser who gets energized by helping organizations understand how they can raise more money. He’s a second-generation fundraiser, a past winner of the Direct Mail Package of the Year, and data-driven. His superpower is summarizing things. Steven is married and has three kids. Key Takeaways: Vulnerability is crucial in fundraising - showing that an organization needs help actually increases donations, contrary to the instinct to appear perfect and self-sufficie...
Apr 10, 2025•40 min•Ep. 196
Key Takeaways: Release the Outcome: Don't tie your self-worth to others' decisions. Focus on effort and preparation, and give people the power to make empowered choices. Reframe Rejection as Protection: Rejection isn't failure; it's feedback. Use nos as opportunities to refine your approach and understand that timing and fit matter more than personal rejection. Build Relationships First: Prioritize authentic connections over immediate outcomes. Listen to people's needs, validate their concerns, ...
Apr 03, 2025•33 min•Ep. 195
Key Takeaways: Trusting your intuition is key to becoming a confident decision-maker. Intuition, unlike instinct (which is fear-based) or intellect (which is data-driven), comes from experience and deep knowing. Fear of failure, perfectionism, and external validation often hold people back from making strong decisions. Recognizing these barriers is the first step to overcoming them. Confident decision-making requires releasing attachment to the outcome. The more you focus on being true to your v...
Mar 27, 2025•30 min•Ep. 194
About Andrea Kazindra: As the Co-Founder/CEO of Musana, I’ve spent the past 16 years dedicating myself to building a sustainable community development model in Uganda. Together with an exceptional team of local change agents, we’ve worked tirelessly to empower communities to thrive independently, free from reliance on foreign aid. I am driven by a vision that every community possesses the inherent capacity for self-sustainability. Beyond Musana, I am a passionate Jesus follower, I love spending ...
Mar 20, 2025•44 min•Ep. 193
Few people know how nonprofits work. Dan does. Specializing in helping business owners and professionals create nonprofits that last, Dan has helped new nonprofits raise over $3 million, turned around several struggling organizations, and helped over 30 non-profit leaders create sustainable nonprofits. Key Takeaways: Dan emphasized that fundraising fears are often rooted in psychological barriers. By reframing asking for money as a partnership and understanding the donor's desire to create impac...
Mar 13, 2025•44 min•Ep. 192
Key Takeaways: Engaging board members in fundraising can be a chronic challenge for nonprofits, often due to resistance and discomfort. To enroll the board, it's crucial to make fundraising tasks feel good, easy, and fun. You set the emotional temperature for board fundraising. Your comfort level and excitement will influence the board's engagement. That’s why it’s important to understand your own emotional temperature and deal with it before trying to influence the board. Dispatching board memb...
Mar 06, 2025•22 min•Ep. 191
Key Takeaways: Build long-term loyal communities of support by focusing on relationships, not transactions. Stop pitching, pushing, and trying to convince people to care about your cause. Instead, find like-minded people who share your values and vision. Adopt the "philanthropic heart" model, which is based on a person's lived experience, focus on future gains, and acceptance of people as they are. This helps you connect with donors on a deeper level. Understand the six human needs that drive de...
Feb 27, 2025•30 min•Ep. 190
Key Takeaways: Identify and acknowledge your resistance, such as being overly attached to outcomes or trying to fix others. Understand that fear has a role but should not drive your actions. Reframe negative mindsets and stories into more positive, empowering narratives. Make the unconscious conscious to change unhelpful thought patterns. Practice surrender, trust, and gratitude to cultivate a receptive state. Engage in joyful, playful activities that activate your whole being. Take inspired act...
Feb 20, 2025•29 min•Ep. 189
Stephen has 15+ years of experience in finance, spanning nonprofits, startups, and Fortune 500 companies. He’s worked across diverse industries, including foster care, financial literacy, housing, software, professional services, and more. He believes nance and accounting should be simple and practical. Key Takeaways: Nonprofit organizations often have a scarcity mindset around money due to the "not-for-profit" label, which can limit their ability to invest in growth and make bold moves. An indi...
Feb 13, 2025•45 min•Ep. 188
Key Takeaways: Inspiration is more powerful than manipulation or influence. Inspiration involves being a model for the change you seek, without trying to change others. It releases resentment and doesn't require others' approval. Avoid the compulsion to change people's minds. Instead, focus on sharing your authentic perspective and experiences. People are more likely to be influenced when they are allowed to choose for themselves. Understand your own ego needs and ensure your actions come from a...
Feb 06, 2025•32 min•Ep. 187
Key Takeaways: Focus on high reward, high urgency, and high reward, low urgency tasks first each day to make progress on your important goals. Don't let low-reward, high-urgency tasks consume your time. Celebrate your wins, no matter how big or small. Taking time to acknowledge your achievements will motivate you to keep working towards your goals. Be open to delegating or outsourcing low-reward, high-urgency tasks that don't require your personal attention. This frees up your time for higher-im...
Jan 30, 2025•29 min•Ep. 186
Key Takeaways: It's not the strategy that's the problem, it's your feelings about the actions required to execute the strategy. Maryanne emphasizes that understanding your thoughts and feelings is more important than the strategic plan itself. Embrace uncertainty rather than seeking certainty. Maryanne explains that the more you need certainty and control, the more opportunities there are to feel uncertain and out of control. Learning to live with uncertainty is key. Set bold, audacious goals, n...
Jan 23, 2025•29 min•Ep. 185
Laura Bonnell, a seasoned journalist with 25 years of experience in Detroit, founded The Bonnell Foundation in 2010 after her daughters, Molly and Emily, were born with cystic fibrosis (CF). Despite having ten siblings between them, Laura and her husband, Joe, had no idea they were carriers of the disease, as no one else in either family had been diagnosed with CF. Driven by her personal experience and professional expertise, Laura used her platform as a reporter to raise awareness about CF. Bef...
Jan 16, 2025•40 min•Ep. 184
Key Takeaways: Mindset shifts cannot be achieved through strategy or training alone; coaching is necessary to remove barriers, create self-awareness, and build empathy. Staying sovereign means being in control of your own thoughts and actions, regardless of the outcome of your fundraising efforts. Coaching can help in these three ways: First, it will help you get out of your own way or shift your mindset so that you can get rid of your barriers. Second, you will be able to create more self-aware...
Jan 09, 2025•23 min•Ep. 183
Key Takeaways: Pitching, pushing, convincing, or trying to get someone to see things a certain way doesn’t work. When pressure is applied, people tend to push back. Instead of pushing ideas onto others, focus on drawing out their thoughts and feelings. Release attachment to the outcome. The more you are able to avoid fixating on the outcome, the more likely you can achieve it. Also, set aside personal agendas. Remove anything that might distract from your main goal which is to make people feel s...
Jan 02, 2025•26 min•Ep. 182
Key Takeaways: Embrace discomfort and take risks to broaden your range and become a more powerful leader and fundraiser. Release the outcome to unlock confidence, productivity, and opportunity. Honor and manage feelings of shame and guilt rather than avoiding them, as they play a role in keeping you humble and motivated. Acceptance of discomfort leads to evolution and achieving amazing feats, while the ego system hinders growth. Overcome fears, embrace vulnerability, and practice gratitude for c...
Dec 26, 2024•23 min•Ep. 181
Lou Kotsinis is CEO of BCS Interactive, a digital marketing agency dedicated exclusively to the nonprofit community. Since 2011, Lou and his team of designers, technologists, and digital strategists have helped nonprofits nationwide grow their causes and reach millions of followers through impactful web design, social media marketing, and smart digital strategy. Key Takeaways: Build authentic relationships and digital communities to increase influence, income, and impact. Gather honest feedback ...
Dec 19, 2024•34 min•Ep. 180
James Misner is the founder of The Kipos Group. Over his career, he has facilitated the raising of 100’s of millions of dollars to support nonprofit organizations. A trusted expert in the realm of fundraising strategy, staff, culture, and implementation, he brings a sharp focus on small and mid-sized organizations engaged in direct service. Key Takeaways: CEOs and founders of small nonprofits who feel inferior need to change their mindset from feeling inferior to recognizing their unique contrib...
Dec 12, 2024•45 min•Ep. 179
