Ep. 184: The Familiarity Trap: Why “Good Enough” Is Slowing Your Fundraising
EPISODE 184
The Familiarity Trap: Why “Good Enough” Is Slowing Your Fundraising
About the Episode:
I see this pattern constantly with nonprofit leaders: staying busy, staying loyal to systems and strategies that feel familiar, and wondering why results have plateaued. Today, I break down what I call the familiarity trap, the tendency to cling to fundraising tactics, tools, and routines not because they’re effective, but because they’re comfortable. I talk about how burnout often shows up as indecision, avoidance, and endless tinkering instead of forward momentum. I unpack why familiarity feels safe to the brain, how it keeps leaders stuck in low-impact work, and why decisiveness (not perfection) is the fastest way out. If you’re circling the same decisions, rewriting the same content, avoiding donor outreach, or telling yourself you’ll “deal with it later,” this episode will help you recognize what’s actually happening and show you how to interrupt the cycle with clarity and courage.
Here’s what you’ll learn:
What the familiarity trap is and why it’s so common in nonprofits
How burnout shows up as indecision and avoidance
Why “thinking about thinking” keeps leaders stuck
The neuroscience behind comfort, fear, and decision-making
Why decisiveness beats perfection every time
How familiar tasks drain energy without moving revenue
The cost of delaying donor outreach and key decisions
How to choose one path and commit long enough to see results
The difference between being careful and being stalled
It’s not your stories—it’s how you’re telling them. If your amazing work isn’t getting the attention (and donations) it deserves, it’s time for a messaging shift. The Brave Fundraiser’s Guide guide gives you 10 done-for-you donor prompts to make your message impossible to ignore. Get it for free here! https://christinaedwards.krtra.com/t/xKuLs6tOiPZa
Christina’s Favorite Takeaways:
“Familiarity is not a reason to keep doing something.”
“You cannot build your organization based on one loud, vocal person's preference.”
“Effort doesn't equal impact.”
“Overhaul doesn't mean a hard time. Overhaul could be simple and easy.”
“The familiarity trap isn't just about the fear of failure; it's about the guilt of outgrowing.”
FREE Resources from Splendid Consulting:
How to Work with Christina and Splendid Consulting:
Double Your Donations - Raise More From Your Laptop Without Chasing Grants or Galas
Easy Emails For Impact™ - Turn Your Inbox into an Income Stream
Donations on Demand: Build a $5K Email Campaign System in 30 min/week
The SPRINT Method™ - Fundraise Like a Pro, 5 Figures At a Time
Connect with Christina and Splendid Consulting:
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*Links may be affiliate links which means I may earn a commission at no cost to you.
Christina Edwards 1:26welcome back to the podcast today. We're talking about this concept that I see very, very rampant inside of organizations of every single size. It's particularly common in established organizations, so regardless of budget size if you've been established for 510, 20 or longer years, this is really common. I'm calling it the familiarity trap. So we're going to identify what that looks like for your organization and what to do instead. This is on the heels of having worked with so many organizations alongside them in the past many, many years, and really seeing this happen again and again. And one of the things that we've been doing across our programs this year, it's the beginning of the year, is q1 is such a beautiful time for like, rest and planning, right? We sprinted, we pushed hard last year, and it's time for a rest. It's time for some reprieve, but also it's time for planning. And one of the things that I see so many people do, and it's, it's systemic, it's not your fault, is I'll rest, and then I'm going to frantically jump back up and get right back in it. It's like, starting in the middle of the book, right? You're not giving yourself time to, like, go, Okay, what book do I want to read in the first place? So that's why, inside my program, The SPRINT Method™, and inside The Purpose & Profit Club, this is what we're doing. I'm anchoring everybody, and I'm bringing us back. We're doing our q1 and two plan right now, because this is that 10,000 foot view. So you can plan for what am I doing? What book do I want to read? Does that book? Does that get me closer to our goals for this year? Speaking of goals, what are our goals? So if you haven't done that and you're listening to this, you're not too late. You absolutely can do this. We're doing this in February for the sprint method. We did it in January for the purpose of profit club. Anytime is the right time to start doing this. So don't give yourself that little lie that it's too late to start. So let's dig in why you feel guilty letting go, even though you know you maybe should. Maybe there's something you're doing and you're like, I probably shouldn't be doing that anymore. It's not really working anymore, but there's this like tug, there's this familiarity, and so you keep doing it. Okay? So this might be that that mix you finally seeing the mix of old campaigns, outdated messaging systems that technically work but don't fit anymore. I'm calling out your donation tool. I am calling out your clunky dinosaur. CRM, any sort of tech that you are avoiding, any sort of tech. Have you ever looked at another nonprofit's page? Or maybe you went to went to make a donation recently, and you were like, damn, there. That was really effortless. That donation was like, it passed Christina's litmus test. She was able to donate from her couch. It was like, super slick and easy to use and user friendly. And you're like, should we have that? The answer is yes, and don't tell yourself, it probably is really expensive. There are so many tools that are either free or very, very affordable for organizations of every single size. So it might be your system, it might be your tech, right? It technically works technically, but it doesn't fit you anymore. It doesn't fit your organization anymore. It doesn't fit where you're going. It's not broken. It's mismatched, okay? So for the first time, maybe you're thinking, we can do better than this. We should do better than this. I want to do better than this. And then this starts kicking in immediately, the guilt, the guilt, you immediately start to backpedal. You tell your. Self, well, you know, it's still healthy, it still works. Gosh, we spent a lot of time on this. That's one of my favorites. Or so, and so is just like, she's already trained in how to use this tech, or she already knows how to run that campaign. She could run that 5k in her sleep. So, like, let's just keep doing it. Familiarity is not a reason to keep doing something. You with me. So I want you to think about we have a sink. We have a sink in our house that we're getting fixed because it has this, like tiny, tiny leak in it, right? So it's like a tiny leak. It technically still works. We don't have to get it fixed, but I want to get it right. I want to get it fixed because that leak, what's going to happen with that leak? It's just going to get worse. So I have the part. Plumber is going to come, they're going to fix it. If I let it go, it's just going to get worse. Then there's water being, you know, coming out, and I'm spending money on water that I'm not using. It's wasteful. There's 1000 reasons, but it's a little bit of that, like, it's not emergent. It's just a tiny thing. If I shut it off all the way, it's fine. If I turn it on, it's just a little trickle. Don't tell yourself that little trickle doesn't matter, right? It's okay. It still works. We spend so much time on this. The team loves it. That's a big one. The board loves it. Or maybe you think your donors love it, but when you actually, like, really think about it, it's not your donors that love it. It is like two really vocal donors, two really longtime donors. You cannot build your organization for two very vocal donors preferences. Is it their organization, or is it your organization that you're leading to serve the community, the people right? What is in, what is in best interest for the community, the people you serve, not just two people's preferences, right? There is an organization here in Atlanta, and I've noticed they've had a change in some of their programming, and a lot of their programming is not near me anymore. It's not convenient. I gotta get on a bunch of highways. I gotta sit in traffic. That's not convenient for me. Is this a bad move for them and their constituents? No, I actually understand what they're doing. It makes a lot of sense. They're trying to choose a more central site for their events, and choosing more of like downtown or metro Atlanta doesn't make sense for their wider constituents. That's okay, right? So if they asked me my opinion, I'd be like, keep doing what you're doing. I don't want you to change it. I didn't want you to change at all. I want you to have them. You to have them down the street for me, right? You cannot build your organization based on one loud, vocal person's preference.
Christina Edwards 7:34
Or this is another one. It's tradition. You start defending what you saw wasn't working because it's familiar, and letting go feels like betrayal. Okay, I'm thinking about one of our clients. You're going to hear her on the podcast very, very soon. Mary joined the sprint method last year, and she came in, and she was definitely in this familiarity cycle. She came in, she knew she needed something different. She knew the way that she was trying to fundraise wasn't working, and at the same time, she kept doing it the same way it was. It was even interesting to watch her, and we're going to talk about that with her. I'll talk about that with her, of how she had to, like, stop doing what was familiar in order to start doing something that was unfamiliar. And unfamiliar feels nervous, unfamiliar feels uncertain. Unfamiliar might even feel risky, but at the same time, being stuck in that cycle of familiarity was doing a couple things. It was keeping her revenue low, it was keeping her donor base stagnant, and it wasn't giving her room to grow. So she was having these fundraisers time in and time out that weren't meeting their goals right. But she kept pushing she was she kept that forward momentum, she kept that action. But not all action is created equal.
Christina Edwards 9:07
And for her, making the change did mean upgrading her tech. Making the change meant changing the way she was fundamentally fundraising the campaigns she was running. It meant making the change in how she was asking the story with the campaign, how often she was asking to, who she was asking to. She made a lot of changes, and that meant that she had the biggest year she has ever had. She had multi five figure fundraiser in December alone. She raised over $50,000 like I am so proud of her and the work that she did to make this change, because she's finally hitting her own personal goals, her own dreams for her organization, and it's happening, but first she had to let go of this binary thinking. So let's dig into what happens next. What happens next is your brain jumps to all. Or nothing, thinking if we change it, we'll lose everything. We'll lose everyone. Everyone will get mad, right? If we keep it, at least we're safe, at least this is familiar, at least I know what to expect, right?
Christina Edwards 10:28
but you're not stuck between keep versus destroy. You're stuck between comfort and alignment. The next version, the next evolution of your organization, is over here, but there is a leap in between. So I want to share with you, kind of this idea of the mirror. The mirror is when somebody with an outside perspective, a strategist, a coach, a trusted peer, shows you what you can't see. Okay, this becomes crucial someone who can see what you can't and gently say, I see another way. So this is a personal example, and I think about this conversation all the time because it changed me. It was such a simple, two minute long conversation, and it changed me so we were redoing our fun front yard. We were battling, trying to grow grass forever. And I was always trying to like piecemeal, to figure out what our front yard needed, like, for some esthetic, for some curb appeal. And I could never quite do it like I would go to, you know, the garden center, and I would find a shrub or some flowers that I liked, and one at a time, or a small group at a time I would, you know, plant them. Sometimes they would die, sometimes they would take but it was just like, not cohesive. It wasn't like I could never figure it out. It always felt like the front yard. Always felt like a math problem I couldn't solve. Because when we bought the house, there was like, an azalea here, a shrub there, it just again. Was sort of like, it felt very happenstance, right? And as the the shrubs and flowers grew, it just again, kind of felt like it's fine. There was nothing wrong with it. It looked okay, but it just didn't look great. And then I was DIYing it, and I could just again, never resolve the melody. So we had hired a landscape designer years ago to do help us with the backyard. And I was like, Maybe we should talk to him. Maybe we should bring him for the front yard and just see if he can drop something that's like in our budget and makes sense. And he blew me away. Blew me away. And so he put together something that, first of all, was totally affordable, so it wasn't like it are all automatically kind of debunked me going right of like, oh, this is too much. We everything's fine. And instead, he just put something that, like, worked for our family, work for, you know, my lack of watering, etc. And it blew me away. And I was like, Oh my gosh, I'm so excited to do this. So I remember when it was time for him to, like, overhaul the front he, like, really redrew the entire front experience. And we don't have a large front yard by any means, and it was really cool to see how he redrew it. Okay? So then he's really great about transplanting. So if he finds, you know, a shrub or something like that, and he'll, he's kind of like an artist in that way, he'll like, he knows what he wants to dig out. And I'll have him kind of over here, and he's like, Oh, we can move that to the back, or we can move that to the side. And he's, you know, replacing things when he can, transplanting things when he can. And at some point, I remember we were in that stage where he had brought in a lot of new plants, and he had kind of some to potentially transplant, etc. And he said to me, and I was like, hemming and hawing over they're going to be, I would say they were maybe a foot tall, like small 12, to, I don't know, 15 inches, something like that, of a couple of plants. And he looked at me, and he said, Christina, you're doing all this work for a $25 Azalea. Like, I was like, Where can we put these three azaleas? And look, I tried to grow them. And it was like a couple of other shrubs. He was like, think about how much time, how much labor we got to go dig a hole. And, you know? And he was like, you're saving something over like, think about the value of it. And it wasn't that he was saying, throw away this $25 Azalea, but he was like, you're holding on to it so tightly. And it was probably because it was something I just, you know, bought in the last year, trying to patchwork this together. But it was such a like eye opening moment, because he was like, You're fighting so hard for something that I can go get at Home Depot and about five minutes for 20 bucks I can buy this on sale, like, let's think big picture, big picture. And so it was such a reminder that effort doesn't equal impact, and that starting fresh isn't disrespectful. It's strategic. It was recognizing this azalea you're holding so deeply are onto doesn't work with the new. Scheme. It doesn't even work with your goals. It doesn't go here. It doesn't even have the right sunlight here. It was just such a funny moment, because he's like, such a he's very, like, sarcastic in that way, and that's his style. And so it was just such a funny moment where it was like, why are you holding so tightly to this $20 Azalea? And I think about that. I think about that in my own business, I think about that for my clients, like, where are they holding so tightly to something that isn't even what they wanted in the first place, and doesn't even work with a strategy, it is so replaceable, right? Think big picture. What makes more sense here?
Christina Edwards 15:40
And what's underneath that is this idea of like, if I let go of this campaign, if I let go of this fundraiser, this all these grants I'm applying for, it means what it will be risky. What if we fail? What if I'm wrong? What if I can't explain this to my board? What if we lose the little stability we have? It's better to have a $20 azalea than to have no shrubs at all. Right? There's a risk in it. What if none of these new plants take right what if it exposes I don't have the right answer. So this familiarity trap actually convinces leaders that familiar equals safe, familiar equals certainty, even when the familiar thing is quietly underperforming, right? And so what's really being feared here isn't failure. It's like visible failure, because the thing isn't already a rock star fundraiser. Otherwise we wouldn't be having this conversation in the first place. It's not a great tech tool. Otherwise you wouldn't want to change it. So failing while trying something new feels more personal, more embarrassing, more high stakes than failing slowly and quietly with something old. So the familiarity trap quietly costs you so much, it costs you your confidence. Your confidence shrinks because you're not trusting your own instincts, right? You second guessing decisions versus having I'm thinking about my landscaper coming in, going, I got you. This is the what you want. This is the dream. I love our front yard now. Love it. It's great. It's energy leaks. So many energy leaks. It's that like burden of thinking about it. It's the enormous effort too, of maintaining systems that you don't even believe in or that aren't great. They are not great. They are not great experiences for your donors. Your donors don't enjoy this clunky experience, either, right? Or they're not excited again. They're not excited about the old school dry chicken dinner gala or the community meetup that has less and less attendees every single time, and then we see this burnout come in, right burnout from that misaligned work, Courage gets deferred. So every time you say, like, we'll do it next year, you're reinforcing that habit to yourself right of delay, and that strategy becomes patchwork. So instead of like, clear, intentional designs, clear, intentional fundraisers, clear intentional messaging, bold copy. It's just like this, piecemeal. One more, one little thing. This is when people say to me, Oh, I've tried XYZ before. I've tried what you're talking about. I've tried a social street team before. I'm like, No, you haven't. All you did was Patchwork, a social street team on top of a campaign that was already broken with me on top of an entire conversion experience that needs to be completely overhauled. Now I'm using words like overhauled, which may give you overwhelm. Overhaul doesn't mean hard time. Overhaul could be simply, simple and easy. That's what our clients are doing in the sprint method. We have clients who are part time, founders, part time. They don't work full time in their nonprofit. And they are doing this. They are changing their tech tool. They are changing their campaigns. They're raising 1020, even $50,000, in their campaigns. They're absolutely doing it inside the purpose and profit Club, where our clients and small teams are working together to get their Social Street Team aligned, to layer on more advanced strategies. So it's like, you know, instead of seeing diminishing returns with your direct mail piece or your annual appeal, we need to change what we're doing. We don't get rid of the annual appeal. We get rid of it in the way that is outdated and clunky. Because what gets smaller, slower and harder over time when you stay in this familiarity trap is momentum gets slower, belief gets smaller, change gets harder, right? The real conversation, the hard conversation, gets avoided. Well, this just isn't the best time, right? And that's why I think it's it's so interesting. I'm thinking about one of our clients in the club who she knew she needed to make some changes. She needed to make some systems changes, and it was not the best time to do that, in November and December last year. Of course not. But we had we had accountability, we had an agreement she was going to look at that in January of 26 and that's exactly what she's doing. By the time this is out, she will have already made her change, and I'm so proud of. Her for that right? Is like having that accountability, having somebody who's like, I see you could be raising so much more with just one change, right?
Christina Edwards 20:25
a one bold step away from what's familiar. So it takes guts. It takes guts to change. But who better than you? Right? You have guts. If you're a founder, if you're a leader, if you're a fundraiser, if you're a marketer, you have guts. You can do this. It takes guts to stop. What raises a hard 2k or a hard 20k but costs you so much time and people power, right and expenses. It takes guts to change that. It takes guts to change your CRM or your clunky donation tool. It takes guts to be first, but you can do it. You can do it. I did this in my own business. I've done this actually many times, but one of the more gutsy moves that I had to make a while back was saying goodbye. Saying goodbye to done for you services, goodbye to clients that I loved, so that I could make room to serve so many of you, so I could make room for the club, so I could make room for the sprint method. I couldn't be doing that if I was in in working alongside organizations, doing, you know, done for you fundraising and done for you comms, right? And I remember going, Oh, my God, am I crazy? I'm turning away 1000s of dollars of retainer, monthly retainer, recurring revenue in order to make space for this other thing. Of course, it felt like liminal space. It felt like the in between. I could hear that part going, it's familiar, it's safe. Stay with what you've got. But my dream was over here. My dream was to hop on Zoom doing exactly what I'm doing. I'm looking at my bulletin board right now. I can see across all of my programs, all of the names of the people that I get to have just a little part of helping. I get to help so many of you. I get to help make your dreams, your goals, your organization, happen faster, and to be alongside so many of you is a gift, and it's so to watch so many of you win to watch you win to watch you fail, and get back up to watch you iterate, to watch you honor your creativity, honor your biggest dreams, your organization, like it is worth it, all day, every day, to have taken that leap. And also, yeah, it was familiar and it was hard. So the familiarity trap isn't just about the fear of failure. It's about that guilt, right? The guilt of outgrowing that something that once served you, that event, once served you, and it might not anymore. We have another client in the club who who really did a good deep dive of like where funding came in last year and what funding was, a slog through what tactics and what funding was, I'm using air quotes easy, at least easier funding, right? And sometimes the ones that were a slog were actually ideas or events or campaigns you liked, right? And so it takes guts to say we're going to retire this one. We're at least going to table it for this year. So you don't have to overhaul everything. You don't have to panic. You definitely don't need to make yourself feel bad. But the next step to do is to really think about and I want you to look at both. I want you to look at data. I want you to look at intuition. I think there's both that are really, really important there, of like, what's working, what's not, one campaign, one system, one strategy, that maybe you've been defending lately, right? But you want to ask yourself, Am I keeping this because it still fits or because it's familiar? If I were designing this today from scratch, would I build it this way? Is this what I would do if I was going to start all over? Right? What would become possible if I stopped patching and started redesigning? That's leadership, right? Not reacting, not saying safe all the time, not clinging tightly, right? It's realizing that you need an outsized perspective. That's why I love coaching so much. I always thought, like, even in the very, very beginning of my very first business, one of my skill sets has always been I can see the forest through the trees like I can see it. I'm like, ooh, do this. It's like, it's so hard to see it for yourself, and I love coaching so much for that, because you can bring to me where you're at and where you want to be, and I can help you get there faster, right? That's where the growth happens, right? So someone who can see where you're a little too close, and that's not a failure either. But that's why we coach. That's why, you know, consulting is so important. That's why having an outside voice inside your nonprofit is really, really helpful. So we'll pick it up next time. If you want help to do this your organization, I highly recommend looking into my programs that we have the sprint method, which is really made for emerging organizations, to learn how to raise five figures or more. Every time they fundraise. We also have the purpose and profit Club, which I like to say is like having a full time consultant in your back pocket, like year round, right? And so we really layer on advanced systems, whether it's direct mail, digital fundraising, social street team, and you get a lot of support in that process. I will see you in the next one you've got this.