Title Fundraising Without the Ick:

Building Donor Trust Instead of Donor Pressure

Maria Bryan is a trauma-informed storytelling trainer. She is the host of the When Bearing Witness® podcast and facilitates the When Bearing Witness® Trauma-Informed Storytelling Certification Program. Maria’s work helps nonprofit leaders tell powerful and impactful stories that resist harm. Over the past 18+ years in the nonprofit and public sector, Maria has trained thousands globally in person and virtually—focusing on trauma-informed storytelling and purpose-driven marketing. Her learning lineage spans a Master’s Degree in Public Administration, a Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism, and professional certifications in Trauma & Resilience, Trauma-Informed Space Holding, Trauma-Informed Coaching, and Somatic Embodiment & Regulation. Maria is a firm believer that storytellers make the world a healthier, safer, cleaner, and happier place.

More about DonorBox at https://donorbox.org/

Episode Summary

In “Fundraising Without the Ick: Building Donor Trust Instead of Donor Pressure,” Hugh Ballou welcomes Maria A. Bryan for a timely conversation about replacing guilt, urgency, and manipulation with trust, clarity, dignity, and meaningful donor relationships. Maria challenges many traditional fundraising practices that rely on pressure and explains why ethical persuasion can actually strengthen donor engagement and long-term retention.

Maria explores how trauma-informed storytelling changes the way nonprofit leaders collect, shape, and share personal stories. Rather than reducing people to a single problem or using painful experiences simply to generate emotional response, she encourages organizations to preserve context, dignity, consent, agency, and choice throughout the storytelling process. She also emphasizes that consent should not be treated as a one-time form, but as an ongoing conversation in which the story owner retains meaningful control.

The conversation also examines donor autonomy. Maria explains how overly urgent fundraising language can create resistance, paralysis, or a one-time “go away gift” rather than genuine connection. Trust grows when donors understand the need, see the impact of their generosity, and are given the freedom to choose how and when they participate.

Hugh and Maria also discuss how organizations can build an ethical storytelling culture through training, policies, clear procedures, and even a harm-repair plan for moments when mistakes occur. The goal is not perfection, but a culture that recognizes power dynamics, protects story owners, respects donors, and learns continuously.

Maria leaves nonprofit leaders with a practical challenge: slow down before launching the next campaign and consider the experience of both the person whose story is being told and the donor receiving the message. Fundraising does not have to extract generosity through pressure. It can invite generosity through trust, clarity, shared purpose, respect, and ethical storytelling.

In this episode, you’ll discover:

• Why urgency can sometimes undermine fundraising instead of strengthen it
• How ethical persuasion encourages action without manipulation
• Why donor autonomy and choice strengthen long-term relationships
• How trauma-informed storytelling protects dignity and trust
• Why consent should be ongoing, not merely a signed form
• How power dynamics can influence whether someone truly feels free to say yes
• Ways to build ethical storytelling practices into organizational culture
• Why clarity may be more persuasive than urgency
• How nonprofit leaders can create fundraising experiences that donors actually want to continue

Learn more about Maria’s work and fundraising resources at DonorBox.org.

 

The Interview Transcript

Hey, Facebook friends, we’re getting ready to go live in just one minute for this week’s episode of The Nonprofit Exchange, which is how you can find us: TheNonprofitExchange.org. TheNonprofitExchange.org—you’ll find today’s episode. And it’s really a good reframing of a lot of the things we’ve been taught wrong about fundraising.

So we’re going to go live in five. If I can find the button—they keep changing the button. Where’s the button? Oh, there’s record. Every time I come on Zoom, it’s different. All right. So now you’re seeing me fumble. We’re getting ready to go live with today’s episode, so hold on.

Hi there. This is The Nonprofit Exchange, and I’m Hugh Ballou. I’m the host, and I have a fascinating guest with a really helpful topic today.

Fundraisers are often told that urgency drives action: make the problem feel immediate, make the emotion stronger, and give the donor a reason to act now. But what happens when urgency crosses the line into pressure, or when a compelling story asks too much of the person whose life is being shared?

My guest today is Maria Bryan, a career storyteller and Partnership Marketing Manager at DonorBox. She has over 18 years in the nonprofit and public sectors and has trained thousands of professionals globally in trauma-informed storytelling and purpose-driven marketing. Her academic and professional background includes a Master of Public Administration, a bachelor’s degree in journalism, and training in trauma and resilience, trauma-informed space holding, coaching, and somatic regulation.

She also facilitates trauma-informed storytelling education through her When Bearing Witness program, so she’ll talk about that a little bit. Maria’s work centers on helping organizations tell powerful stories that inspire action without sacrificing consent, dignity, safety, or trust.

Today, we’ll explore ethical persuasion, donor retention, consent, trauma-informed storytelling, and how organizations can build fundraising systems that feel relational rather than manipulative.

Maria, welcome to The Nonprofit Exchange, and let’s address this topic you gave us today: “Fundraising Without the Ick: Building Donor Trust Instead of Donor Pressure.”

Maria A. Bryan

Right. Well, first of all, what a joy to be here with you and your audience. So thank you so much for having me on. And what good timing, as a lot of us are building our end-of-year fundraising campaigns.

What I mean by “the ick” is paying attention to your body after you’ve written your campaigns, the stories that you’ve chosen, and the call-to-action language that you have. If the person whose story you’re telling—what if that was your son or daughter? Would you feel icky about sharing that story? What if it was your parents or grandparents or neighbors, or just someone that you loved?

And when you get to the ask language, how would you feel if this was an ask you were giving to your parents or your grandparents, or again, your aunts and uncles? If you were using manipulative and urgent language, if you’re writing it to no one in your mind, you might not feel the ick. But then when you think about someone you love receiving these messages, how does that feel? Does that feel icky?

So that’s what we’re talking about today. We’re talking about when we’re choosing the stories we tell, when we are putting together language for our fundraising campaigns and our fundraising landing pages, what are they making us feel inside? And if there is an ick, let’s address that ick.

And everything we’re going to talk about—I just want to say, we’ve learned this. We were taught this. None of us has the intention to do harm in our fundraising, so I bring this with a great deal of kindness and grace. Let’s just talk about what we’ve been taught, unlearn that, and learn again, both from a values perspective, because that’s why we’re here. But also, there’s evidence and science behind a lot of these practices that we’ll be talking about today as well.

Hugh Ballou

You’ve studied a lot of things. And so let’s go back to the trauma-based training. The name of your organization is When Bearing Witness. So talk about that, and talk about the trauma training and preserving the dignity. Can you dig into that a little bit?

Maria A. Bryan

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I’m a lifelong storyteller, a career storyteller. And I had a student actually, during a webinar, ask me how trauma-informed storytelling works into my framework and teachings, and it just absolutely changed my life.

I realized that as fundraisers and storytellers, we are bearing witness to very painful things—a great deal of trauma that is happening in our communities and with families and with individuals that we work with. Also, when it has to do with climate change and animals, wherever we work, it impacts us, and we don’t necessarily have the tools to manage, to mitigate more harm, and to manage how trauma responses might come up in our bodies as we bear witness to these stories.

Our story owners, whom we ask to bravely share their stories, may experience some kind of re-traumatization if we don’t do things in a way that is trauma-informed. We actually should never promise that we’re not going to cause a trauma response. It’s just not a promise we can make.

Also, our audiences and our donors—which is some of what we’re going to talk about today. We briefly talked before this about vicarious trauma and secondary trauma. These things might come up in messaging, in the images that we choose, and in the videos that we create.

We don’t want to stop people from giving to missions they care about because they’re feeling so dysregulated inside. And we, of course, don’t want to cause greater harm to the people that we work with and serve through asking them to tell stories for fundraising.

So that’s what I’ve studied. I took, you know, 15 years of being a nonprofit marketer and then layered on understanding trauma and trauma responses and trauma resiliency. And that’s what When Bearing Witness is—connecting those dots as fundraisers and as nonprofit marketers.

And again, the goal is not to do zero harm, because we can’t promise that. But how can we mitigate harm, understanding that everyone has experienced some kind of trauma and may have a trauma response?

Hugh Ballou

Let’s talk about crossing the line—the ethical persuasion. You know, so many people who go into this kind of work are so passionate. It’s like, “You’ve got to save the dolphins. You’ve got to do it now.” So that’s the guilt trip. How do we create this ethical persuasion?

Maria A. Bryan

Yeah. I had a really, really great conversation with the folks at Dear Tomorrow. Dear Tomorrow does something wildly different than so many other nonprofits who want you to know right now what the problem is and what’s at stake if we don’t solve it.

A research project took on Dear Tomorrow, and I’ll tell you in a moment what their project is, but they studied a few different ways folks try to get people to move to action, whether that is manipulation or guilt or all kinds of things, right?

So what Dear Tomorrow does is ask people to imagine. They actually ask people to imagine by 2050—so I think it’s 24 years from now—to think of someone you love and what you want their life to be like through the lens of climate. So are they in their garden? Are they hearing birds chirping? You’re imagining a place in the future, in 2050, that you want someone you love to experience—likely a young person in your life, a student, a child, a grandchild.

And they did a huge research project. I believe it was 60,000 people who took part. I’d have to check that, but I’ll grab the research and give it to Hugh to share in the notes here. The number-one best way, from all of these different kinds of calls to action and different kinds of campaigns, was that this imagining actually brought people to action. It actually made people want to do something.

So sometimes this urgency that we feel, which turns into these urgent messages, completely backfires because people go into paralysis, right? They give what my friend Maria Rio says is a “go-away gift”: “I’ll give you a gift, but please go away.” And then they’re not going to give again. They’re just trying to soften the guilt and shame and horror that they feel internally. But you’re not going to count on them to really give again.

If you’re cultivating a community of people who are imagining a future—and this is just one way; there are many ways that we can do this ethically—I just want to point to something that now is evidence-based: a different route in our messaging. What are the possibilities? What is there to look forward to? Where is the hope? And then guide us on how we can get there.

Hugh Ballou

So it’s a conversation. We forget that. It’s exploring relationship. And it’s really exploring—we know before we’ve approached the donor that they’re interested in the topic, hopefully.

But let’s talk about building trust with the donor and creating a long-term relationship. Because sometimes, if we focus too much on the consequences and the urgency of it, they’re going to do that thank-you gift and never come back.

So talk a little bit about how we cultivate the relationship for long-term or recurring giving.

Maria A. Bryan

And again, we’ve been taught to bring urgency into our messaging. There was a book that recently came out this time last year, “Neurogiving,” by Sherry and Koshi, who pretty much did research into the neuroscience of why people give and why people don’t give. He has a whole chapter on urgency messaging and giving and how often it backfires.

It backfires for a few reasons. One is maybe more evident: when people hear urgent messages, they kind of go into paralysis. But something else was interesting—and I don’t remember the name of it—but it’s this concept that people don’t like to be told what to do. And there’s science behind it. If you’re saying, “Give now,” people are like, “I will not give now.”

So what’s happening in their brain is they’re not being a spoiled brat. That might even be a little bit of a trauma response of, “You’re taking away my agency. You’re taking away my autonomy and choice when you’re telling me now or never. I have to give. I have to give by this Friday or the match will go away, or the dolphins will go extinct.”

Right? So being trauma-informed means allowing for safety and agency, and we can absolutely do that in our fundraising messages. When we give agency to say, “These are ways that you can give, and if you can give financially, this is the huge impact that it would create,” those messages are incredibly important.

Also, in that book, there was a case where Costco was running an urgent sale, and then they ran the same urgent campaign shortly after, and they actually got sued for it. So people do not like when you are manipulating urgency that isn’t actually urgent. People are paying attention to when you’re saying, “You have to give this much now,” and then three months later, you reuse that same language again. It matters. People are paying attention.

And one reason I’m so proud to work at DonorBox is that your tools matter for this as well—giving autonomy and agency to donors.

For example, I gave to a cause that I deeply believed in in my early 20s. They were doing really great social justice work in Brooklyn, New York, when I lived there. And so I made a monthly gift. After a while, I could not afford that monthly gift. I tried to change it, and there was no way I could do it on my own. There was no way for me to do it. I had to call them and ask them to pause my donation.

It was upsetting and mortifying for me to make that phone call, to the point that even when I had the means to give again, I wasn’t going to give to them again.

So look at even your tools and audit: What kind of agency do people have when they are a recurring donor? With DonorBox, when you make a recurring gift, it allows folks to go in there and decide on their own: “I was giving $100 a month, but I’m in a different place. It’s holiday season. I now want to give $25 a month.” Or, “I want to give monthly—that was my intent—but really I’m in a season where I need to be giving quarterly now.”

So anywhere within your donor process, is it clear when people are giving what they are giving to? Do they have autonomy once they’ve given you access to an ongoing gift? Can they go back and have autonomy over that? It makes a difference.

Hugh Ballou

Oh, it sure does. So ethical storytelling was referred to in your introduction. How do we create this impact statement for people in this conversation without them feeling like they’ve been exploited? Give us some tips.

Maria A. Bryan

Right, right. Well, this is really nuanced and complicated.

I think that what we have traditionally done is make our story owners—our beneficiaries, the people we serve or work with—one-dimensional. And I taught this arc: they came to our door; they had a really big problem; we gave them services; they had a huge transformation, right? And then we’re kind of—the nonprofit is the hero of the story.

And it really doesn’t take into account so much of their journey, the other mentors in their life, the other nonprofit organizations that supported them, the systems behind the scenes that are the reason why they were there to begin with.

So what I say is, let’s—even though it’s hard in short form—bring more context to the humans that we serve and educate our donors on them.

For example, let’s say it’s substance misuse, right? You’re never going to actually get a story like that. If anyone has worked in that field, you know you’re never going to have someone who is having substance misuse, they go through your program, and then the problem is solved. Typically, it can take a long time for that kind of issue.

So that kind of singular story—it’s not really true or authentic, and it just flattens substance misuse. It also may really flatten the story owner to a deeply shameful, traumatic, painful season of their life.

So on one hand, how can we bring more context and nuance to something like substance misuse? Trabian Shorters teaches asset framing when we’re talking about our community members. If we’re talking about Amelia, who misuses substances, well, what else do we know about her? Maybe she’s a fantastic artist. Maybe she is really trying to get through her college program because she wants to go into banking, whatever it may be.

We don’t want to water down the story, but how can we bring in complexity? This person isn’t just someone who misuses substances or is going through this season. There are things that they aspire to. There are other people in their life who hopefully love them and support them.

So it’s not, again, watering down their issue, but it’s a balance of saying, “This is a human. This is a complex human who’s going through a very difficult thing. And we are rooting for them to become that chef or become that banker or become that mother that they want to be.”

So this is the big picture, and I teach a long course on tactics on how to get there—everything from: Is someone ready to tell their story? What kind of questions are we asking, and how are we framing the story? And all the way to: Are we acknowledging audiences?

Because if we’re sharing Amelia’s story, and then Mary reads the story, and Mary’s brother has substance misuse disorder, if that story is written in a certain way, it might be so upsetting for Mary that she doesn’t give because it just brings her back to a really painful place in her life, right?

So it’s complicated, and it might sound overwhelming. But actually, being trauma-informed is just acknowledging: Amelia has experienced trauma. Mary has experienced trauma. Maria has experienced trauma. So how do we provide safety and agency across all storytelling and fundraising points?

Hugh Ballou

I think there’s a piece before that. Trauma-based, trauma-informed storytelling means you have permission from the person. So she may not want her story told. How do we cover that?

Maria A. Bryan

Exactly. Yeah, yeah.

I think one of the worst-case scenarios for this is everyone signs a media consent form before they enter our program. But now we’ve gotten to the point where it’s not even about a properly signed, language-appropriate, culturally appropriate consent form. It’s about ongoing consent conversations.

So I could ask Amelia if she would like to tell her story. She’s maybe at the end of the program, but we don’t know—she might relapse. We don’t know. And Amelia says yes.

Now, did Amelia say yes because she’s excited to tell her story, or because I asked her to and she doesn’t want to let me down? Or because there’s a power imbalance between me and Amelia because I work for this organization, right?

So that’s part of the consent conversation. We’re not just asking to share your story. We want you to understand that you can say no, and that it’s okay if you say no, and this is where the story is going to end up.

If Amelia then confidently says yes and we get to the interview, we’re letting her know: “We’re here. But if now’s not a good time for you, for whatever reason, we can slow it down or postpone it. And all these questions I have—you have full agency on what you want to answer and what you don’t want to answer. There’s nothing that you need to share.”

And then, once that story is written, giving them the opportunity to review the story. Consent is now woven throughout the process, where they’re saying, “I know I said that during the interview, but now that I’m looking at it, I think my daughter would really not feel good if I mentioned her in this story that I told about her,” right?

So this is why just the media consent form right at the beginning is not enough.

And even, Hugh, what’s important to that note is we expect them to go through the process of, “If this story ends up on social media and my kids see it, will they be proud, or would they be really upset?” We shouldn’t ask Amelia to come up with that on her own. We should be having those conversations.

Would it be difficult if your parents, siblings, or children saw this story? If the answer is yes, maybe we should be telling an anonymous story. Or maybe it’s just not a good time for you to be telling this story.

Hugh Ballou

Or make up a name and somebody that doesn’t exist.

Maria A. Bryan

Yeah, exactly. An anonymous story is essentially that.

Hugh Ballou

I don’t know if I told you—I’m kind of new at doing the podcast. I’ve only done 676 of these, and nowhere has anybody ever mentioned the power differential, which is huge, especially for males in leadership positions. We’re totally blind to that piece of it.

And so, why did people say yes? And do they realize the impact of it? Yes. And what did they say yes to?

So I want to highlight that as a soundbite. Folks who are watching this or listening to this, don’t try to write everything down. I should have said it earlier: the full transcript will be on the web page for this interview. Write down what you’re going to do about it.

So Maria, I want to show the DonorBox website. But before we do, how do you build this ethical culture of storytelling with your board, your volunteers, your other stakeholders, your staff, so they’re not afraid to make mistakes, but they know the boundaries?

Maria A. Bryan

Right, right. Oh, that question makes my heart sing, because we can’t, as individuals, really bring this to fruition. We need people on board.

So I think it just starts with modeling and conversations. Also saying, I’m seeing more and more nonprofits doing this. Actually, a lot of these nonprofits that did things 30 years ago that we now look at as upsetting campaigns—they’ve changed. They’ve changed and have started really employing ethical and trauma-informed practices. So we can point to that.

And to me, that’s the movement of, like, we’re all moving in this direction together.

And then the next step is policies and procedures. So this could be like a red light, yellow light, green light when it comes to certain storytelling practices. It could take the different elements of storytelling and fundraising and create checklists, but also guidance on things like story readiness, what’s going to happen during the interview questions, and what the review process looks like.

And education—you know, things like sharing this podcast with your board members to kind of get things percolating.

And the last thing I want to share, Hugh, because you said, “How can people do this?” and I think you said something like “not feel bad about it.” I think it’s really important that we recognize that we’re humans and that we will make mistakes.

It doesn’t matter how well-intended we are. If we have the policies, we have our biases, we have our blind spots. And so one thing I teach in my program is having a harm-repair plan. What grace that gives us to know we will mess up. We will go astray. Something will happen, and we will not intentionally do it.

But here’s the game plan. Here’s the four-step game plan that we’re going to do to remedy the harm that we have done.

Hugh Ballou

Love it. So there is grace.

So let’s look at DonorBox.org. DonorBox. What will people find quickly? And then we’re going to come back to a couple of short-answer questions. What will people find when they go to DonorBox.org?

Maria A. Bryan

DonorBox.org will bring you to DonorBox. DonorBox is a really powerful, sophisticated platform that supports online fundraising and in-person fundraising, so a really holistic system.

We also have a CRM that supports managing your donors. So this is a spot where you can really build trust with donors by having it branded within your website. We prioritize safety and security for our donors. We have just a wonderful suite of products that support making donations easy so that you can focus on building those relationships.

Hugh Ballou

Great. So the link will be on the page for this episode.

So, are you game for a couple of rapid-fire questions to end up this great conversation? Urgency or clarity—which is more persuasive?

Maria A. Bryan

Clarity is absolutely more persuasive. If people are clear on what the problem is and how their donation will support others, they will likely give and likely give ongoing because it comes back to agency and autonomy—that they have an understanding of the issue and the organization’s impact.

Hugh Ballou

What’s a fundraising phrase you would happily retire?

Maria A. Bryan

“Give now.”

Hugh Ballou

What’s one question every storyteller should ask before pressing the publish button on their story?

Maria A. Bryan

If this story was about my mother, father, daughter, or son, would I publish it?

Hugh Ballou

What makes a donor feel like a partner rather than an ATM?

Maria A. Bryan

They’re invited to heal alongside the communities that they work with.

Hugh Ballou

So we’ve got a lot of people looking to learn things, and they’ve learned a lot today. What do you want the leaders who are in our audience listening today—or watching—what do you want them to do differently as a result of this episode?

Maria A. Bryan

I would love for listeners to have a little bit more slowness in their next campaign and to really be thinking about the story owner and the donor experience—and if those people were their loved ones who had that same traumatic experience.

So if you work with vets, you would just have to pretend that maybe your mother or father was a vet. How would this come across?

Hugh Ballou

Maria, thank you for reminding us. Thank you for reminding us that generosity does not need to be extracted from people. It can be invited through trust, clarity, shared purpose, and respect for others, and the power of storytelling.

I want to remind people you can find out about DonorBox at DonorBox.org—H-T-T-P-S, DonorBox.org.

You’ve been listening to The Nonprofit Exchange. I’m Hugh Ballou. Thank you for joining us, and remember that effective leadership builds trust, systems, and relationships that allow your mission to thrive.

Maria, you’ve shared a lot of wisdom with us today. Thank you for being my guest today on The Nonprofit Exchange.

Maria A. Bryan

It’s an honor. Thank you, Hugh.