Fundraising with Purpose: How Mallory Erickson is Reshaping Nonprofit Leadership

Tasha: [00:00:00] Good morning. Could you please introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your nonprofit origin story?

Mallory: Yeah. Thank you for having me, by the way, for this conversation. I’m so excited for any opportunity to talk to you, but my name is Mallory Erickson and I have spent my entire career in the nonprofit sector and really like my whole life.

I started volunteering I think when I was like. Six or eight years old when my family came to this country, they were supported by local nonprofits. And I’ve always like, investing in nonprofits and participating is just like a big part of my DNA. And then I started, in an education nonprofit in a teaching fellowship program organization called Citizen Schools.

That was my first like official job. Although I did plenty of summer interning, love it to let me, file things in their offices and, became an accidental fundraiser like so many people do. As I was getting promoted up through different positions that then came with big fundraising responsibilities.

And so found myself in fundraising roles, but [00:01:00] never called myself a fundraiser. Because of my own like discomfort with fundraising and my own limiting beliefs about. Money and, and investment in organizations and maybe even our organization’s worth. And so had like maybe a part of my burnout story in nonprofit was also a little bit of an identity crisis.

I just really couldn’t figure out how to make nonprofit leadership feel sustainable and for fundraising to feel not just good. Okay. To not make me wanna. Grow up every time I was gonna talk to a donor. And yeah, that really led to my own kind of personal breakdown and breakthrough. And I ended up, while I was in a nonprofit leadership role, having the opportunity to get certified as an executive coach, trained in have it and behavior design and design thinking.

None of that was connected to my fundraising at the time. It was through the sort of education, components that I was leading for the organization. But those frameworks [00:02:00] really came together and totally changed how I approached fundraising, how I felt about fundraising, in addition to all the like leadership implications that it had as well.

’cause those frameworks are just so helpful in understanding your own behavior and the behavior of people around you and being able to. Grow and change into the fundraiser or the leader that you wanna be. So that’s my whole life is my nonprofit origin story.

Tasha: I love that. And you’ve worked now, through your work in nonprofit, but also these companies you’ve built after the fact, these communities, what I find so fascinating is fundraisers come in, there’s like generational fundraisers, almost like yourself, right?

This is part of the DNA of their entire families. There is equally or sometimes more people that end up in this sector on the most like meandering, hilarious paths of, this was never the plan, but they’re here now anecdotally, what would you say in terms of what you learned with this design [00:03:00] thinking and behavior?

Do people come in more prepared for nonprofit when they’ve actually had more exposure to it, or do you think that comes in with a whole bunch of like background assumptions?

Mallory: Yeah. Did you say the word prepared? I did say the word prepared, I think. I think I was trying to like track. I’ve never thought about this before, but probably people who have had some previous experience in nonprofits are better prepared in certain ways for what to expect, but are they prepared for success?

In the same ways. I don’t know. And part of that I think is what you’re alluding to, which is we have all these limiting beliefs that surround the sector. We have stigmas and scarcity mindset that’s really embedded structurally in the sector that then infiltrates our brain and our body. And

that I feel like a lot of the work that I do today honestly is helping people unwind that, take those things out. So I think [00:04:00] for some folks who show up in the sector from Uncommon Pathways and don’t have those mental models, I think they really help us help push us forward because they come in like, wait, but why is it this way? And we’re like, just this is how it’s, and so sometimes I think PE folks come from outside the sector with patronizing and, ways of showing up and pretending like they know more than the people who have been.

Building that organization or in that community, and I’m not endorsing any of that. I think community knowledge and organizational knowledge and grassroots on the ground knowledge is so critical and so important. And I think there’s a lot of curiosity that we could invite in when we have, friends and folks and coworkers who are new to this space.

Tasha: Yeah, it’s been so interesting because we’ve actually had a decent number of people joining the nonprofit, and they always check with me first, which I love because they’ll literally say, I’m really interested in working in this sector. Can I just talk to other [00:05:00] people who are in the sector and ask those questions?

I’m like, Hey, if you’re coming in and that’s the angle you’re coming in at, love it. I would maybe say that when you start your conversation with somebody that this is what you’re looking for, but, it is a really cool sector. I think there are more and more people who are seeing it as this is a place where I can find purpose.

A lot of workplaces don’t necessarily have that feeling of purpose and we’re all looking for that more. But you’re so right. I see a lot of people who the assumptions about how nonprofit has to work are really deeply dug in for many of us. And how do we shake loose from that?

And sometimes it’s that new, fresh group coming in has different

what It makes

Mallory: them uncomfortable, I think that was like some of my biggest learning in bringing in people to organizations that I worked at or even now in my day to day is just because something makes you uncomfortable doesn’t mean it’s wrong and doesn’t mean those aren’t conversations we should be having.

And so when those new voices come in and it makes us really uncomfortable, we like shut it down, I think that’s where we lose the [00:06:00] opportunity to actually just get curious together and be like, yeah, change is uncomfortable. So that’s okay.

Tasha: It is uncomfortable for sure. Okay, so I always love.

To ask people what their favorite part of working in the nonprofit sector is.

Mallory: I think you just said it honestly, in terms of why people are want to be here. I think getting to wake up every day and feel like you get to live out your values and the things that you care about the most in the world, the worries that I would have about the world to feel like I was doing everything I could to.

Change those things that is such a gift that I think I really took for granted a lot, what it means to get to live a life like that. And then also just being surrounded by. People I’m values aligned with. And I think having my whole career in the nonprofit sector, that’s also something I take for granted and sometimes have to step out when, or hear my husband tell a story and I’m like, wait, you guys aren’t aligned. You’re not aligned with the people you work with on that core value or belief.

And it like rocks me a [00:07:00] little bit because I feel like in the nonprofit sector, I just didn’t really like, not that I loved every single person I ever worked with or every boss I had plenty of toxic nonprofit stories I could tell you. But I never felt like fundamentally misaligned on beliefs, perhaps related to how the world functions.

Tasha: Yeah. And what’s probably pretty special, and again, I don’t think many people in nonprofits see this in the same way, and I think it’s been more since. I got into a startup and I’m meeting all these other people who, they’re in startup mode and so obviously these are passionate people as well and they’ve got deep purpose, for what they’re doing, but it’s somehow still different than the people I meet who are in the nonprofit space of.

Where their purpose is, how they see the world, how they view what could be better, what could be done. It’s just there’s this like slight shift to all of how non profiteers come into this space and. We come in with very different lived experiences, and [00:08:00] that’s like probably our strength. Right. And I don’t think often nonprofit is looking at it like, it’s so hard to have some of these difficult conversations when we’re all strapped, when we’re all, looking at culture and going, oh my goodness, we have to fix this, but we have no budget to figure out how to fix this.

And, so I do think, nonprofit has some unique challenges that for-profit. Totally doesn’t, no. I’m not seeing the same things in the startup ecosystem in the same way. Or they grow out of them faster, right? Than nonprofits do.

Mallory: Yeah, totally. And I feel like , gosh, we could go down so much.

There’s so much there in what you just said. And I don’t like the reasons for why this is true, but nonprofit people are also just like the most resourceful people ever. I remember the first time I had like a for-profit experience where they were talking about budgets for something and I was like.

What are you talking about? Why on earth would that cost that much money to do? And just because I had been running organizations for years where I had watched people do unbelievable things and gather people and put on these [00:09:00] tremendous events and all this. And I’m not saying we should not have more resources for those things.

We totally should, but I feel like we don’t even realize the gap between what we accomplish with so little. Everybody else out there, I even remember when COVID started and all these companies were, filing for bankruptcy, like huge big companies right after a few weeks or months or whatever were filing for bankruptcy.

And I was like, wait, why don’t they have a six month reserve? Why am I entire nonprofit career has my board required a six month reserve? And these massive companies don’t have to have that. They’re just all these standards that I think, ultimately make us like incredible professionals for the all the wrong reasons.

But it does mean, I just think there’s so much talent in this sector. It just the most amazing people.

Tasha: Yeah. We need to own different titles for ourselves, right? For sure. As innovators, as creatives.

Challenges. I’d love to ask you, ’cause we’re already moving into this challenges conversation, [00:10:00] but I always feel like you were the most interesting mix of great human skills in fundraising and everything. And then on the reverse side, you’re also a fundraising technology founder. You’re with fundraising AI and so it’s almost like it’s all been shoved into one person somehow, which I love. ‘Cause you don’t fit in any camp. Exactly.

Challenges for fundraisers right now , what are some of those big challenges you see across the fundraisers in the sector? I’ll be specific just because that’s your zone of genius.

Mallory: Yeah, I think this probably applies to everybody right now too, but just like being in July of 2025, every especially and being based in the us although I think this is impacting nonprofits worldwide, the amount of,

consistent changes, updates, clawbacks to funding and to priorities in our country in the US right now is causing this like unbelievable stress nervous system response that I [00:11:00] think is making fundraisers feel understandably, really scattered and uncertain about where they should focus, who they should talk to, what they should say about a certain thing or program.

And I think. The rapidness of those things, coming at them with the underlying urgency around meeting their budget and just waiting for a moment that doesn’t feel like quote unquote a bad time to fundraise. Is just really overwhelming them. Totally. Understandably and I think that is creating some

uncertainty and paralysis and fear globally in a fundraising landscape because the US is such a large portion of giving. Or like philanthropic giving in that way and it’s impacting federal grants, but also how found what foundations are prioritizing corporate partners, you know, international.

Relief. And then at the same time, the needs feel like they’re growing exponentially too. And so as the needs grow, the need for additional [00:12:00] funding grows and fundraisers sit at that intersection, of that. So I honestly think that’s not like one kind of tiny challenge, but I think it’s like, how do you fundraise in that climate and trying to figure out what to say, when to say it and who to say it to.

Everybody is trying to figure out if that’s different than what they would’ve said last month or two months ago, or six months ago.

Tasha: Then how do we find time? In the wild schedules we already have to make a plan, right? The thing is, and there’s so many brilliant folks in the sector talking about vacancy rates, which we already know have been high at nonprofits and have really not gotten back to normal since COVID.

But the expectations of what nonprofits can do, the gap they’re filling. It keeps increasing and as government funding disappears for the actual services that, organizations are running that are, maybe government nonprofits have never been more filling in totally gaps without the support they need too.

Totally. I keep looking at fundraisers and, [00:13:00] I know so many wonderful. Female fundraisers, women in the sector, that are also momming. We talked about momming before we started on here. And people who have moved because of COVID who are now getting called back into office and have no idea how they’re gonna make that work because they were allowed remote work.

I feel like fundraisers are in this very unique position right now in the sector. And you can just see a little bit of this crumbling a little bit, right? It does get me a little concerned, about how fundraisers are going to adapt in the year ahead.

Mallory: Yeah. I think, a lot of what I talk about these days is stress response and our nervous system and how that relates to our experience and how we can show up every day and the actions that we take and stress is supposed to end, you know?

Stress is a really important part of our body’s reaction. There are actually a lot of positive things that come from having a stress response to certain things. And we should have a stress response to certain things, right? There’s nothing wrong about that, [00:14:00] but stress has to end.

That stress response cycle. We have to get our parasympathetic nervous system back online and with everything that you just said. And we just get stuck in chronic stress and then that’s what leads to burnout. And I think that we have to solve for that, or we are in real big

trouble.

Tasha: We’re in big trouble. So much of what we do at the Hive is focusing in on this idea of like peer networks and peer support. What does that look like for you in the sector when you were in-house and now as you’re building out companies, as you’re supporting other fundraisers?

Mallory: Yeah. My background was in smaller grassroots organizations primarily, and so I was never somebody who knew about A FP or CFRE or the professional fundraising world. I was really lucky here in Northern California there’s a nonprofit center A-C-V-N-L, for volunteer leadership and and nonprofits.

So I had a great kind of like peer learning [00:15:00] experiences through that. I was a part of a young ed, bay area networking community that was. So helpful. When I was navigating, we would just go to coffee early, more like 7:00 AM once a month or something like that. And it was so lovely and so important I still keep in touch with the number of those EVs and a lot of them are still in-house in the positions that they were in 10 years ago, which is so amazing. And I think also a testament to that, group of peer support that has walked with each other through all of this? I talk a lot about fundraising culture because I focus more on fundraising. We talk about the culture of philanthropy a lot in our sector, but I’m way more interested in the culture of fundraising.

And what I mean by that is what does peer support look like inside your organization for fundraising? And I don’t just mean that you’re writing envelopes to help your fundraising peer out, but what are the ways that we talk about money in our organizations, whether we’re a fundraiser or not, and how does that build a sense of peer support that we’re all in [00:16:00] this together?

I think there’s something just about knowing that you aren’t, in my book, I talk about. Isolation and the role that isolation plays in chronic stress and burnout and isolation isn’t just like physical proximity, right? It’s being seen, feeling like you belong, being a part of something.

And all of that is so necessary, and we have to identify the things inside our organizations, inside our communities that are buried, that are creating isolation. Mental isolation, almost an emotional isolation. So much of what I think about with Practivated the company that I’m leading now, even though we are using generative AI to help simulate donor conversations and give feedback and do coaching in order to democratize professional development and training much more.

I also am thinking about , as this platform grows and as our users grow, how do we start connecting people to each other? How do we create here community within the organizations? If we have a 75 [00:17:00] person university inside the system with a fundraising team, how are they being intentionally connected to each other to know, Hey, here’s an area you’ve been struggling in.

Your peer over at this other college is actually really good at that. You guys should meet up for 30 minutes so they can talk to you about how they do that in donor meetings. And so I’ve been thinking a lot about within the organizations we have in the platform, but also I just introduced to.

Eds the other day who are both inside Practivated. One of them has resolved a challenge that the other is now facing and that we know from onboarding and we are like, Hey, the two of you should meet, and so has some great things. I love what you’re doing with the Hive and I feel it’s

so important to just be creating intentional spaces. That’s what I love so much about the Hive. What you talk about and the resources that you provide it’s not actually just about being in the same place or showing up to the same Zoom call.

It’s what is the intentional way in which we are building actual [00:18:00] community through our actions and behaviors and routines.

Tasha: what’s funny about community is there’s that consistency and there’s rituals to community and that’s what kind of creates then belonging over here.

And that’s what’s really hard is like you can gather people from, similar backgrounds, similar workplaces or whatever, but like creating that place where it’s like, oh, this is what you’re coming for. Like you said, intention is enormous. It’s great if you have a team that you’re working with fundraising.

It’s funny I’ve worked in sales in the past and everything. It can be a really supportive place if that’s the culture, or it can be a very competitive place if that’s the culture too, right? And , how do we create those internal cultures for fundraisers? Or maybe you’re like the loan fundraiser and no one else in fundraising, and then that’s another whole vibe completely, right?

So tell us a little bit more. I would love to have you explain a little bit more the dream behind Practivated. ’cause not only it’s new, it’s just starting to get there, but what’s the dream? What did you see? How did this come into being?

Mallory: I’m such a, like one foot in front of the other person.

Sometimes [00:19:00] I have crazy big, wild ideas. But honestly, Practivated started as just me trying to solve a problem with the folks inside my program, power Partners and the Alignment fundraising collective that I hadn’t been able to solve, I felt I’ve been for the last five years, building habits and coaching tools and workshops and trainings to help fundraisers build confidence and become more aligned and embodied versions of themselves when they talk to, when they raise money, put together plans, then ultimately talk to donors.

And the one piece I felt like I couldn. Solve for, was that like donor meeting conversation? I couldn’t be with all of my clients or everybody in my programs, like right before they were going into a meeting or to help to talk about every single donor or prospect they wanted to have a conversation with.

And I wanted to solve that for them because a few years ago I sent an email out to my email list asking. How many more donor meetings people wanted to have a week, and the number one [00:20:00] most common answer was one. The second most common answer was zero.

Tasha: It’s crazy.

Mallory: And this is across at the time, maybe 12,000 people on my list.

There are thousands of responses and. I couldn’t get over that and I have been sort of obsessing about that for years. What is holding fundraisers back from even wanting those meetings. Now you could easily say that it’s too much on their calendar. Their plates are already full, but all of these people want to raise more money.

Right. Otherwise, why are you on my email list?

Tasha: Yeah. And

Mallory: don’t wanna have more donor meetings and that those two things are incompatible. So I was like, we have to change that. And I think part of that for me, creating ated, which are these, as I was saying, AI generated donor avatar conversations where you can prepare for a specific meeting, but you can also just go into practice scenarios and build.

Skills and you get feedback across 16 different indicators, and then you can Practivated our coach, who will [00:21:00] coach you around how to improve those areas. We had somebody do a 31 minute coaching session yesterday after a five minute simulation, seven minute simulation, I think. About how to improve their structure, flow and transitions of meetings.

And I just saw the timestamp come up and then reached out because I was like, oh my gosh. Whoa. And it was just incredible because she got to learn what was actually in a more concrete way. So many of us leave a donor meeting, we’re like, oh, I did a bad job. Or I really messed that up. Or, that didn’t go as planned, but we don’t.

Actually talk about why, because there’s also probably a lot of things that went really well in that meeting, but we’re obsessing about the thing. The one thing that didn’t go well, that sort of tainted the whole thing. So getting scored on 16 things, seeing all the things you’re doing great, but then saying, okay, actually the reason that felt messy was because of this one was because your structure, flow and transitions were really, were, we’re [00:22:00] not there.

And so then you work with a coach to strengthen that one area and then the pieces fall together. Somebody asked me the other day, what’s your end goal with Practivated? And I said to change fundraising forever. I want my North Star to improve the lives of fundraisers, and nonprofit leaders.

That’s it. At the end of the day, that’s all I want. I’ve been trying to do that through a variety of ways for the last five years and Practivated it as the most sort of scalable, impactful, life changing way that I’ve been able to discover, and that’s why I’m going all in on it.

Tasha: I think it creates like the biggest thing that stands out to me, and this was part of what our feedback has also been from.

From these hive chats that we’ve been helping, it is a safe space and safe spaces are really hard in nonprofit, right? The ability to go, and I know we have Tim Lockey in common as a friend, when Tim has often talked about feelings of incompetence. When people feel incompetent, they have a very big reaction to that.

And you don’t wanna put yourself out there. There’s the [00:23:00] rare person who’s like, I feel incompetent, I’m gonna double down. That’s, especially when we’re overwhelmed, we just. Back it up, right? So I think it’s such a cool tool, but it’s also just of the use cases for AI that I’ve heard of in this sector.

It’s not the automation piece that we hear about so frequently that is like, no, you shouldn’t be getting rid of relationships. You should be figuring out how to make better relationships. Right? And so I think you’ve just hit on something. It’s so beautiful.

I love it, Mallory.

Mallory: Thank you. I think that, and I feel this way about the hive too, that I just wanna say I feel like for so long. It was this like human or technology conversation, right? Are you gonna tech forward or human, tech centered or human centered or whatever. And I think this growing like human centered technology is the way.

It’s Practivated is about helping fundraisers build more connected, aligned relationships with real donors, right? That makes the point. How do we have [00:24:00] the ability to actually physically, biologically, cognitively connect with other people. And how do we build that ability? And then for what you’re doing too, it’s like exactly that.

How do you use technology actually to bring people together in meaningful ways? And I wanna see more of that. I wanna see more of technology helping to build and create and bring people together. That’s

Tasha: perfect. So how can people follow up with what you’re doing. You’ve got a podcast, you’ve got a book, you’ve got courses, you’ve got Practivated now.

How can people follow along with what you’re doing and where should they head?

Mallory: So you can connect with me on LinkedIn, Mallory Erickson. I’m sure we’ll have a link somewhere where I tend to be the most active social media wise. And drop a number of different, references.

If you join my newsletter@malloryerickson.com, you’ll hear about speaking and what the fundraising podcast episodes and things like that. And then Practivated. Go check it out. See what it’s all about. [00:25:00] We have some really exciting announcements coming soon, so if you subscribe over there too, you’ll be the first to hear and, have an opportunity to, check it out in our next wave.

Tasha: That’s amazing. Thank you so much for doing this with me. It’s always lovely to chat with you.

Thank you for having me. This was so nice.