As a nonprofit leader and a fundraiser, I spent a lot of time navigating the concept of scarcity. Lynne Twist who is a global activist and fundraiser wrote the following excerpt in her book, The Soul of Money:
“For me, and for many of us, our first waking thought of the day is “I didn’t get enough sleep.” The next might be “I don’t have enough time.” Whether true or not, that thought of not enough occurs to us automatically before we even think to question or examine it. We spend most of the hours and the days of our lives hearing, explaining, complaining, or worrying about what we don’t have enough of. Before we even sit up in bed, before our feet touch the floor, we’re already lacking something. And by the time we go to bed at night, our minds are raining with a litany of what we didn’t receive, or didn’t get done that day. We go to sleep burdened by those thoughts and wake up to that reverie of lack…This internal condition of scarcity, this mind-set of scarcity, lives at the very heart of our jealousies, our greed, our prejudice, and our arguments with life.”
As a leader, if you think you do not or will not have enough, you will attract other people who are like-minded and behave in ways that match the assumptions you have made. And guess what. You’ll succeed in proving yourself right.
Most funders want to invest in success and, as a fundraiser, there is always a delicate balance to be found of articulating success coupled with opportunities to meet organizational needs. Our nonprofit team was often found grounding ourselves in the good, seeking the silver lining, and making lemonade out of lemons. But it is not easy when our society teaches us to think we have nothing in a community which is overloaded with resources.
This powerful concept of scarcity transcends roles and situations and is about more than just money…it can be about knowledge, security, power, beauty, or really any word that is important to you that you would like to insert into the “not enough” equation.
Like so many thoughts and emotions, scarcity and the fear associated comes from our inner critic and it can overpower us if we let it. A commentary about scarcity in the NY Times says that scarcity “captures our brains. It reduces our cognitive capacity — especially our abstract intelligence, which we use for problem-solving. It also reduces our executive control, which governs planning, impulses and willpower.”
It doesn’t have to be this way. Twist says “Once we let go of scarcity, we discover the surprising truth of sufficiency. By sufficiency, I don’t mean a quantity of anything. Sufficiency isn’t two steps up from poverty or one step short of abundance… Sufficiency isn’t an amount at all. It is an experience, a context we generate, a declaration, a knowing that there is enough, and that we are enough.”
What we put out, we attract. Shift your perspective. Tame your inner critic. Expect and plan for abundance. Abundance of friends, abundance of happiness, abundance of enjoyment, abundance of life….and yes, nonprofit friends, and yes…abundance of resources.
There is enough. We have enough. You are enough, nonprofit leader. You are.
Where is scarcity showing up in your life?