Overcoming Fear
Banish Four Common Fears That Undermine Your Impact
As a warning mechanism, we’d all agree that fear can come in handy. But what happens when it becomes debilitating, or even delusional? Today, more than ever, philanthropists need to find ways to recognize the difference and effectively move forward.
Philanthropy has enough challenges right now without wasting money, time or talent because of fear. Fear can paralyze us and prevent us from learning and improving. It can diminish impact. And it can distract us from the many pathways available for making change.
Here are four common fear pitfalls to recognize and avoid:
Fear of ambiguity.
We often find ourselves plunged into the unknown. This ambiguity causes many funders to be fearful. As a result, they stop. They hunker down. They wait.
For example, a new president is unexpectedly elected, and the foundation’s trustees decide to postpone strategy development to wait and “see what happens.” In the current global COVID-19 pandemic, many philanthropists have decided the situation is too ambiguous to proceed. One funder has chosen to wait until a board retreat scheduled seven months from now before making any major decisions.
When philanthropists allow the fear of ambiguity to paralyze them, they dramatically decelerate their speed to impact. Instead of advancing their mission, implementing top priorities, and meeting community needs with speed and agility, they flounder.
Fear of failure.
Many philanthropists, both new and experienced, frequently ask a universal, fear-based question: “What if it fails?” This is also a question that will want to surface now, when you are looking at ways to make your giving more responsive to needs in a crisis.
Additional questions might include, “What if we launch this new funding initiative and it doesn’t achieve the desired results?” Or “What if we don't have the right skill sets in place to do this effectively?”
Fear of failure is real and prevalent and heightened during times of uncertainty.
Philanthropists often respond to this fear with a scarcity mentality—they hold back themselves and they hold back their resources. But at the same time, fear causes them to invest their time, talent and treasure in the wrong things.
For example, because they fear failing, they’ll invest a lot of money and time conducting excessive research to unearth every facet of an issue before deciding to launch an initiative. Or they’ll sit on the sidelines rather than act.
Fear of supporting the wrong thing.
It’s hard to focus on any one cause when so many demand attention. Community foundations—nonprofits that raise money from donors in their community and make grants to nonprofits in that same community—often feel compelled to meet everyone’s needs. As a result, they fail to take a leadership role on one single issue and find themselves spread too thin in areas far from their original intent.
Meanwhile, philanthropic families fear they will be overwhelmed by funding requests if they publicly announce the launch of a new foundation or new funding priorities. So they stay under the radar, or even give anonymously, giving up the added strengths that come of collaborations and partnerships.
Fear of loss.
While it’s difficult to feel like any of us are in control these days, philanthropists still have a lot of power because of their access to wealth. Donors get to choose which causes they support, whom they fund and what they expect will happen with those funds.
Not surprisingly, funders fear losing that power and control. Because of that many act through fear to maintain power. For example, some donors won’t offer general operating support, because they won’t get to control how the nonprofit will use the grant. But ceding control can lead to big gains, like having a bigger and more diverse team of leaders empowered to act on behalf of the cause.
Why am I talking about fear? Because it’s on our minds. Because fear can hold us back, slow us down, and prevent important contributions by talented philanthropists. The world needs fearless leadership, not fearful philanthropists.
Instead of letting fear become paralyzing, now is the time to steady-on with focus and passion. Philanthropists can look at what made them want to do this work in the first place. They can review collective assets and opportunities with partners and brainstorm all the many possible courses of action. They can identify their top priorities and begin to implement them. From this position of creativity, focus, and strength philanthropists will be ready to take a deep, measured breath and dive in.
