Ambition vs. Fake Urgency

Lately almost every nonprofit email in my inbox reads like an emergency, with a match deadline at midnight or a warning that the work stops if I don't give today.

Some of those deadlines are real. Most are manufactured, and supporters can feel the difference. Each frantic appeal might raise a little more this week, and each one also spends down the trust we'll need when something truly urgent happens. The sector has been crying wolf for years, and people have noticed.

The same pressure shows up inside our organizations. Hustle culture borrowed from startups, Slack messages flagged urgent that could have waited a week, and now AI convincing leaders that two months of work should take two days. I saw this up close working with startups in the Bay Area, and it produced burnt-out teams doing their worst work.

Speed still matters to me. I want ideas tested quickly so we can learn from them. Speed is a culture you build with sprints, rest and clear priorities. Urgency is a tone, and when it never switches off, people stop believing it.

Jonathan is heading into a capital campaign at the Seymour Center and chose to raise in small bursts while he builds. That lets him walk into donor meetings with an invitation to something ambitious and honestly say the organization is fine. I'd take that position over a guilt trip every time.

So treat urgency like a line in your budget. Decide how much you can afford to spend this year, and where. When you overspend it, your supporters, your team and you are the ones who pay.
 

Episode Highlights:

[00:00:30] Why fake urgency is spreading through the social impact sector
[00:01:20] Burnout, donor fatigue and the cost of always sounding frantic
[00:04:55] What real urgency looks like: policy windows, funding cuts, sudden departures
[00:05:45] The boy who cried wolf problem in fundraising
[00:08:10] Urgent for you, or urgent for your audience?
[00:08:50] The urgency budget
[00:09:40] How funders reward "new" over proven
[00:11:15] Hustle culture, 996 and AI-driven speed expectations
[00:14:20] The opposite problem: bureaucracy and organizational malaise
[00:19:10] Speed and urgency are different things
[00:22:25] Raising in small bursts and fundraising from a position of strength
[00:27:50] "Your lack of planning is not my emergency"

Notable Quotes:

[00:04:20] "You can be really ambitious and work on really ambitious work, but do it calmly, do it patiently, do it with a kind of self-regulation as an organization." Eric Ressler

[00:08:20] "Is this urgent for you as the worker working on this or is this urgent for your audience? And I think more often than not, the answer to that, those are different." Jonathan Hicken

[00:08:55] "You basically have an urgency allotment for the year. How are you going to spend it and where?" Eric Ressler

[00:26:35]: “False urgency is putting an emotional burden on your audience that just isn’t fair to do. I almost feel like it should be a sector faux pas.” Jonathan Hicken 

[00:21:10] "Speed is kind of a culture and urgency is kind of a tone." Eric Ressler

[00:29:55] "We need to build that trust and that relationship with our donor base, whatever that looks like, and that's first. That has to be first." Jonathan Hicken

Resources & Links:

• Cosmic: Eric's creative agency for nonprofits and mission-driven organizations
• Seymour Marine Discovery Center: where Jonathan is Executive Director
• 996 working hour system: the 9am to 9pm, six-days-a-week schedule referenced at [00:12:15]
• What to Take and Leave From Design Thinking and the Scientific Method: mentioned at [00:19:25]
• Designing Tomorrow’s article on the ask/give ratio: mentioned at [00:07:25]

P.S. — Struggling to align your message with your mission? We help social impact leaders like you build trust-building brands through authentic storytelling, thoughtful design, and digital strategy that works. Let's talk about your goals »

Full Transcript:

Eric Ressler [00:00:00]: All right, Jonathan, got a meaty one for today. I want to talk today about this balance, I would say maybe even this imbalance that we have in the space, this confusion maybe even between ambition and urgency. And actually I'm going to go ahead and say fake urgency because I think that's mostly the flavor of urgency that I see in the space.

Jonathan Hicken [00:00:20]: Whoa. Okay, let's go. Coming out hot.

Eric Ressler [00:00:30]: All right, so here's what's driving this for me. I think this shows up at all levels. I think it shows up in terms of our communications, right? Everything's urgent, everything's chaotic, everything's on fire. I think it shows up internally, right? Oh, the team, you got to be faster, move faster. I think AI is starting to create this expectation that things that used to take months should take days instead, which I think is mostly bullshit.

I think there's also something that happens at the personal level when that's the environment. And I think there is this cultural set and setting that's creating this faster, faster, everything all at once communications and all the channels. And it's starting to infect our sector and I don't like it. I think we should change it.

Jonathan Hicken [00:01:15]: What are the impacts that you're seeing of this?

Eric Ressler [00:01:20]: I think the impacts, again, thinking about all the levels, we talk a lot about burnout in this space. I think a lot of the burnout in this space is actually directly or indirectly related to this. So I think that's one big thing. I think on the flip side, we're eroding our trust and our credibility with the people that we need to actually make our missions happen. That's a big problem.

So when you think about donor fatigue and donor trust, I don't think the fatigue and the trust is broken because we're sending too many emails. I think the fatigue and trust is breaking because we're not being real with the people that we need to support our work. And I don't think we're doing ourselves a service or a support as a service if every email from us feels like it's either urgent or a crisis all the time because it starts to make us look frantic, unorganized, and not serious as leaders and as organizations.

So those are just some of the top line impacts, but I think it goes deeper than that.

Jonathan Hicken [00:02:15]: I see this in the environmental space quite a bit and something I've been thinking about a lot where we believe, I believe that climate change and all that is an important problem to solve. And every time there's a storm, every time there's a fire, we all get up in arms like this is the sign that this is the end of the world. We got to solve this now. We got to go, go, go.

And even as someone who believes this is an important problem to solve, I see that and I'm like, I think this is doing damage to the environmental movement broadly when every single storm and every single fire is wrapped in this existential crisis that I feel like we're losing our audience because we're putting some of this maybe false urgency on it or asserting that this ambition is something that needs to be enacted right now.

Eric Ressler [00:03:10]: Yes. So that's exactly it. You just hit the nail on the head, which is that you can be highly ambitious and do that work even if the issue is urgent without a fake sense of urgency or a manufactured urgency or an urgency everywhere all at once all the time, vibe. I'll just use vibe as a placeholder word. And I think that is exactly it because scientifically, objectively, the climate crisis is an urgent crisis. Is every email you send about that crisis urgent?

Jonathan Hicken [00:03:45]: Yeah.

Eric Ressler [00:03:50]: No. It just isn't, man. Even for an issue like that. And then when you think about the spectrum of issues where we're all trying to fight for attention and there's advice out there and maybe even some of our advice has been around how you have to create an urgency around the work. And I think there's a balance there. If your work seems important, but something that could be put off, it is going to be hard to get attention and to get support.

So I think this really does come down to balance at the end of the day, but I think there's a huge confusion in the space between ambition and urgency because I think you can be really ambitious and work on really ambitious work, but do it calmly, do it patiently, do it with a kind of self-regulation as an organization. And I think that it goes again both ways in terms of how you communicate externally and how you run the shop internally.

And my argument at the end of the day is that you will actually meet your mission faster if you move without fake urgency than if you move with fake urgency.

Jonathan Hicken [00:04:50]: So what does, let's call it genuine ambition look like in contrast with this false urgency?

Eric Ressler [00:05:00]: So I think every org will actually have moments of true urgency. When there is a policy window that's open, when funding gets cut unexpectedly, which happened to a lot of orgs in the last year. So I want to have some compassion for that. These are just a couple examples. When a leader unexpectedly quits, there are genuine moments of urgency that you can act on and that you should act on.

So I think the distinction is, think about this, do you have a friend who every single time they need something, it's urgent, it must be done right away? And it's just to the point where it's just like, okay, every time I hear from this person, there's some emergency that I need to come in and help with.

Jonathan Hicken [00:05:45]: Yeah, it's a boy who cried wolf.

Eric Ressler [00:05:45]: Yeah. It's exactly the boy who cried wolf. So there's this short-termism in the space, especially around fundraising, especially in the political space, but it's infecting the broader social impact space around all that matters is how much each email raises for us. And we're willing to trade the short-term wins for the long-term credibility. And it's a bad, dangerous game. And I believe we're already seeing and have already seen the negative impacts of that in the political world and it is coming for the social impact sector.

Jonathan Hicken [00:06:20]: It makes sense because if we're putting out all these urgent calls and people respond and then a year passes, two years pass, however long, and then there's certainly going to be a moment of like, well, where are we now? Did we solve that thing? And I think especially when we put this false urgency on these really big problems that actually can't be solved in a sprint, then what we're communicating with the supporters who did show up is like, "Hey, you actually can't take our call for urgency very seriously."

Eric Ressler [00:06:55]: Exactly right. Yeah. And I think that's the takeaway that people have. And then they're just like, "Every time these folks email me, they're asking for money." And I'm not saying you shouldn't make appeals in your communications. You absolutely need to, but there's a way to do that that's respectful. You need to be, first of all, authentic in your communication. If you're communicating urgently, is it actually urgent? Ask yourself, is this actually urgent? Because most things are not actually urgent.

And are we creating value and/or signs and stories of progress alongside asking this ask give ratio that we've talked about before? And I think the best orgs that I follow who really follow more of a brand building approach and less of what we used to describe and still do to a degree as more of a transactional or performance marketing approach, I think it comes down to what you measure.

Are you measuring the effectiveness and the conversion rate of every single email only, or are you also measuring sentiment and donor trust and supporter trust and the overall lived experience of your supporters and the relationship that you're building with them? I think you need to measure both.

Jonathan Hicken [00:08:10]: You pose this question, is this actually urgent as something that we should ask ourselves when we're sending out communications? And I think there's a little nuance in that, which is, is this urgent for you as the worker working on this or is this urgent for your audience? And I think more often than not, the answer to that, those are different.

Eric Ressler [00:08:30]: Those are often different.

Jonathan Hicken [00:08:35]: So you have to be careful because I might think, I might feel just in my job that this email is urgent, getting this fundraising campaign done is urgent, but is it urgent to the people who are giving in the same way it is for me?

Eric Ressler [00:08:50]: I think a really simple way to think about this, if you're a leader or in charge of comms or whatever, since we're talking about that part right now, is that you basically have an urgency allotment for the year.

How are you going to spend it and where? Are you going to take that urgency and are you going to spread it across every single communication? Well, then the impact of each of those urgent asks is going to be basically minuscule, if not meaningless. Maybe it works the first time, but it pretty quickly goes off a cliff. Whereas if you're an org that is acting more patiently and more regulated, I'll just use the word, and then there's three or four or one or whatever the right number might be for your org, urgent request, it's going to have an outsized impact because it's going to be an outlier in how people are used to hearing from you the same way you would think about it in a human relationship.

Jonathan Hicken [00:09:40]: Funders have a responsibility in this conversation. And the reason I bring that up is actually just using an example from the Seymour Center. We have some educational programs that have existed for decades and proven to be impactful. I have found it difficult to get foundations to support these long-term successful programs. And what they tell me is we're looking for something new. And so that motivates me to create something new, to get that funded, even though the thing that I'm trying to build may not be as successful as the thing I already have.

And that creates an environment in which we are incented to create these new programs, create these new initiatives, maybe even in some cases create new nonprofits to meet this funder desire to fund the next new thing. And so I think that there's this cycle, and I think the trust degrades also, because I've also heard in my realm that some donors are losing trust in this sector that I operate in because so many things have started up and died that they approach certain new projects with skepticism. So there's also this almost like this...

Eric Ressler [00:10:55]: You're getting squeezed on both ends.

Jonathan Hicken [00:11:00]: You're getting squeezed on both ends. And so I feel like funders also have a responsibility to be asking these same questions when a new program or a new initiative or a new nonprofit is coming in front of them: is this false urgency to solve a problem that could be solved with something that comes from that genuine ambition?

Eric Ressler [00:11:20]: Let's talk a little bit about how this trickles down into the internal culture and dynamics because I think that's an equally... I see this as moving both ways. So I think there's also a broader culture of we must move fast, we must break things. We don't want to be perceived as being slow or overly bureaucratic. And don't get me wrong, there are orgs that have the opposite problem. Trust me, I've worked with some of them, but it sets this tone working at an organization.

I remember this distinctly from our early years as an agency working with startups in the Bay, in the valley, and everything was urgent. Every single week you were behind was a week your competitor was ahead. And it creates this hustle culture. And it's so ironic because it's the worst way to do anything effectively. Now, don't get me wrong, there's times to sprint, there's times to grind, yes.

But if that is the norm, even more recently there was the, what was it, the 996 thing where the startups in Silicon Valley were expecting people to work nine hour days, six days a week.

Jonathan Hicken [00:12:25]: Yeah. Some CEO put that out as like, this should be the baseline expectation.

Eric Ressler [00:12:30]: So what I want our sector and our leaders to be careful of is this fake urgency is not just a communications problem. It is an internal culture and organizational planning problem too when it's like, well, this needs to be done faster. We need to do it quicker. We need to do it cheaper. It's a race to the bottom, man. And what it does is it forces leaders to burn out. It forces staff and team members to burn out and people produce their worst work.

Again, maybe you have an allotment every year. We're going to sprint four times a year when we really need to, right? But our standard, our baseline is going to be one of calm and intention and sustainability and we're going to be regulated. Hey, if it's not urgent, I'm not going to say it's urgent. If it's not urgent, maybe I'm not going to write you on Slack. I'm going to write you an email or wait till the next time we have an email.

It really does come down to these almost micro interactions that set the tone and the tonality of what does it feel like to work here? And that's something I've been thinking a lot about over the years, but especially recently, I do think AI is coming in and resetting what speed means. And I think we are trading speed for effectiveness and quality in a way that, I'm already seeing people starting to realize this is a problem. And I'm even reflecting on how we make sure at Cosmic and for our clients and on behalf of our clients that we don't fall into those traps of like, oh, well now we can do what used to take two months in a week and it's done.

But then objectively, is it really? Is it better? Is it done or does it now require a month and a half of cleanup because you built it with AI and it's not actually solving the problem?

Jonathan Hicken [00:14:20]: I want to paint the picture of the other end of the spectrum, maybe even going into not enough urgency, just to unpack a little bit for listeners to diagnose where their own organizations are at. In your mind, what is the opposite of what you've just described?

Eric Ressler [00:14:40]: I think the opposite of, and I've seen this, so again, this is a spectrum and there's a balance here. I think the opposite is every decision is painstakingly reviewed, discussed in depth, second guessed, to the point where it feels like getting anything done is like pushing a boulder through molasses. That creates an opposite problem, which is an organizational malaise where it's just like, God, everything's just so slow here. What's even the point?

Jonathan Hicken [00:15:15]: Nothing moves.

Eric Ressler [00:15:15]: Nothing moves. There's no point of even trying to move anything because it's just so bureaucratic, right? We've definitely worked with orgs where, academia can be like this at times, which I'm sure you've experienced. Government can be like this at times and nonprofits can too, especially bigger orgs can suffer from this where there's hierarchy upon hierarchy of decision makers, no one has autonomy, decisions get belabored to the point where by the time the decision's made, it's not even relevant anymore. It's just like, oh great, we got to sign off on that thing that's completely irrelevant now. So glad that happened.

Jonathan Hicken [00:15:55]: And on the communication side, a lack of urgency on communication would just be not communicating or being vague in your communications, not being direct if you're making an ask.

Eric Ressler [00:16:05]: Or not jumping on the times where there's real urgency, when there is a policy window or there is an opportunity that isn't common and you're not primed to act on it in a way that's real and authentic and appropriate. So again, I'm not saying you should never act urgently. I'm saying we have to be careful about how we use our urgency, both in terms of our messaging and our internal culture building.

Hey friends, real quick before we continue today's episode, I'm Eric Ressler, founder and creative director at Cosmic. Cosmic is a creative agency purpose built for nonprofits and mission driven organizations. For the last 15 years, we've helped leaders like you nail your impact story and sharpen your strategy, but we're not here to just leave you with a fancy slide deck and a pat on the back. We roll up our sleeves and help you bring our ideas to life through campaigns, creative and digital experiences.

Our work together helps you earn trust, connect deeply with your supporters, and grow your fundraising and your impact. If you value the thinking we share here and want it applied to your biggest challenges, let's talk at designbycosmic.com. All right, back to today's conversation.

Jonathan Hicken [00:17:20]: The exercise going through my head is, in my role as executive director, when do I turn on the urgency? What are the signals? What am I looking for that causes me to go there? You've given a couple examples already for policy related organizations, for example. I don't deal with that as much. So I'm like, what are some of the triggers that would cause me to say this is time to turn up the volume on the urgency versus, hey, we can sit on this particular project for a little bit, let it bake a little longer.

Eric Ressler [00:17:55]: Yeah. So I would say, and I'll even say the way that I think about this is, is this a business critical problem? So for us, I have a number in mind around how many weeks of runway I want to have booked. And when that number dips below a certain signal, it's an urgent problem and I'm going to act urgently to fix it, which means I'm going to turn off some of the activities that are longer term and turn on more of the survival mechanisms that I know I need to do to close business to keep the shop running.

On a nonprofit side, it may be a fundraising goal and this is a trap because you could always and should always be aiming to raise more and more and more. And if that's your default state, this is the exact way you get onto the hamster wheel of fake urgency.

Jonathan Hicken [00:18:40]: Yeah. It begs the question of, you got to push, right? You got to push at some point, especially if you're a new executive director or something. You got to get in, you got to make an impact, you got to make change. And so you're incented to find that urgency and to act on it.

Eric Ressler [00:19:00]: Yes.

Jonathan Hicken [00:19:00]: And so it begs the question of how do I avoid getting sucked in, going too far basically?

Eric Ressler [00:19:10]: So I think another important distinction related to this is the distinction between speed and urgency because they are different things that I think often also get conflated. So what I will argue for is speed. And what I mean by that is, we recently did an episode around applying the scientific method and design thinking to social impact work. I want ideas tested quickly. So that's speed, right? I want to go from idea to prototype and test as quickly as we possibly can so that we can get out of the overintellectualizing pondering mode and into the testing and learning mode.

So you can act quickly, but without urgency and especially without fake urgency in that moment. So you're doing your work at a clip that builds momentum. And maybe the word to think about is how do we actually build sustained momentum? And the momentum's never going to be perfectly stable, but you want the waves to be relatively stable with some big spikes and then maybe some dips when you're taking vacation or taking time off as a team or as individuals.

Jonathan Hicken [00:20:15]: This is an interesting distinction between speed and urgency there. And it makes me wonder, again, how can I identify that for myself? And some ideas coming to mind are, it's how I communicate.

Eric Ressler [00:20:30]: Yes.

Jonathan Hicken [00:20:30]: It's when I communicate. It's with whom I communicate. A lot of it comes down to these, as you alluded a little earlier, these micro interactions. Am I sending the signal that we're all going to burn to the ground if we don't move quickly versus defining, hey, we're going to move quickly because we're trying to get to this end state or make some decision. We're going to get there. We're good. Everybody, we're good. We need to do the work.

Eric Ressler [00:20:55]: Yes.

Jonathan Hicken [00:21:00]: But hey, be confident. We're going to eventually get there and we'll be fine. I don't know. I'm unpacking...

Eric Ressler [00:21:05]: No, I think you're right on, man. And I'm reflecting on, speed is kind of a culture and urgency is kind of a tone. And you see why it's easy to conflate those things. I actually think we've built at Cosmic a culture of speed. We're fast and we move quickly, but we also have systems for pressure release in that. Some examples, we run sprints, we literally call them sprints, and we work a four-day work week, so we have that recoup time so it can be sustained.

And we know when things need to be done quickly with speed, and we know when things need time for reflection and space. So when we think about our creative work, when we think about naming, for example, you can't speed run a naming process. You can, but it's a really bad idea. Even just logistically, you got to do a trademark search on a name. It takes time.

And at the same time, there are certain things where we're also not the agency that's going to go do a six month research project and come back with a 200-page deck before we put pen to paper on anything. Hopefully that gives a little bit of clarity around the difference between speed and urgency. And again, this comes back from our founding and our principles around design being in our blood and design thinking specifically around getting ideas to test as soon as we can.

Jonathan Hicken [00:22:30]: It's funny because I've actually been thinking about this, not in these exact terms, for a situation I'm dealing with right now as it relates to fundraising, where I have this choice. We have some money saved up for a capital investment here, which would basically do some new exhibits and stuff, and I have enough to get started already. This is a scalable project, so I could get this really high and go huge, or I could start moving right now as part of this experimentation, this let's ship it, let's test it, let's move, let's build as we go. Now, I could stop and I could raise as much as possible between now and an almost infinite amount of time.

Eric Ressler [00:23:15]: Sure.

Jonathan Hicken [00:23:15]: What I'm choosing to do instead is to raise little bits, little bursts to push it as we go. It's almost like our minimum viable strategy in a way where I'm going to ship stuff and test it and keep building on it. Now that changes the tone of the conversation with the donors that I'm going to be approaching here in four weeks or so, because an urgent conversation with these donors would be like, "We need this now. If we don't get this now, then we're not going to be able to do this project and it's on you." It's almost like a guilt trip in a way, which is what urgent fundraising creates, right? It's almost like a sense of guilt.

Eric Ressler [00:23:55]: Or responsibility or...

Jonathan Hicken [00:23:55]: Yeah. Which may be a misplaced responsibility to begin with. But instead, I'm able to go to these conversations with genuine ambition that's not urgent. It's an invitation to these donors to participate to get us to another level. But I can also look the donor in the eye and honestly say, "We're good." It's almost like a position of power in this donor conversation, but I'm able to get there because I have chosen to not take this ultra urgent approach, a more scientific, we're going to roll it out as we have it kind of approach.

Eric Ressler [00:24:35]: I'm realizing that what we haven't done is we haven't talked about why urgency actually can work at times. So when we think about, this is reminding me of maybe timeliness or even just structure is a better word for it, but when you think about fundraising campaigns, capital campaigns, end of year campaigns, there's an urgency built in where it's like, "Hey, we need to raise X amount by X date." And usually it's somewhat arbitrary, honestly. Even end of year campaigns, what's driving that? Taxes. But what it does is it creates an urgency on behalf of the donor to act within a certain amount of time.

You see this in social psychology and app design where it's like, "Check out now on your concert tickets before they're gone." So this is not distinct to the social impact space, but even in hearing the way that you framed that urgent fundraising appeal, which I know is not your style, it felt so icky, man.

It felt guilt trippy and it felt... What I heard is this is an org that doesn't have their shit together because if I don't, out of the blue, make a gift, they're in trouble. And look, there are times where the state of play creates those scenarios where all of a sudden a totally viable, sustainable, tried and trusted model of fundraising disappears overnight because USAID disappears overnight. Hey, no harm, no foul to the orgs who were affected by that. But if that's just your standard operating model, again, it's just like, what's going on here in this place where everything's urgent all the time and our fundraising, if we don't get this one gift, the org disappears? That doesn't seem like a solid sustainable organization.

Jonathan Hicken [00:26:35]: I think you can also unintentionally slip into this, like you said, icky space where, especially if you're dealing with human health or human wellbeing or life and death issues, that false urgency is putting an emotional burden on your audience that just isn't fair to do. I almost feel like it should be a sector faux pas.

Eric Ressler [00:27:00]: Yeah, it's manipulative.

Jonathan Hicken [00:27:05]: Yeah, it's a bit manipulative. Yeah. I know you said it tongue in cheek, but this idea of an urgency budget, I think there's actually something to that where... Actually, I have this friend, and I'm going to get bleeped a couple of times on this right now, but I have this friend that believes that you're born with a limited number of fucks to give, and in your 20s, you just blow your fucks away. And then you get into your 30s, you're like, "Oh, I got to start budgeting these fucks." And actually that has stuck with me so much where I got to budget. I got to budget the fucks I give.

Eric Ressler [00:27:40]: Yeah, it's so real.

Jonathan Hicken [00:27:40]: It's so real. I say that in jest, but also there's something real about that, even as delivering urgency to your audience.

Eric Ressler [00:27:50]: Yeah. I feel like we were talking about this just the other day where even this comes down to the individual level at the end of the day for a leader. When something lands on your desk, having almost an urgency filter: is this actually urgent? Is it urgent to me or is it urgent to whoever is asking for the request? Obviously, the context matters a lot there, but I found myself being much more intentional and, I don't know what the word would be, but just brutal even about what I agree to from an urgency standpoint.

For example, sometimes people come to us and they have a really urgent request and it matters a lot to them. And as much as we want to come through for people, what's the old saying, "Your lack of planning is not my emergency." And it's really easy to get sucked into that stuff, especially in an agency relationship where there's this professional service or service-based expectation that we must serve the client.

And I think we are in service to our clients, absolutely, but more so we're in partnership with our clients, and that's not a way to treat people. Now look, we also have clients that we're deeply in partnership with who we've worked with for years, and they don't abuse that, and when they come to us with an urgent request, if we can do it, we're going to make it happen.

Jonathan Hicken [00:29:10]: Yeah, because you believe it, you've earned that trust.

Eric Ressler [00:29:10]: They've earned it. Yeah, they've earned it, and we're happy to give it. And we know that if we have an urgent request, they'd do the same thing for us, right? If, let's say, they slipped up on a payment or something and it's late and it's going to affect our cash flow, they're going to do what they need to urgently to move it through the process faster than they typically would, for example. So I think that's something that I've been thinking about because it's really easy in our culture for every new request to rise to the top, it becomes urgent at the expense of things you already have planned, and then all of a sudden you're just stuck in this urgency hamster wheel.

Jonathan Hicken [00:29:45]: I think that story of your partnerships with your clients is actually a perfect allegory for what we need to be thinking about in the space, especially as it relates to fundraising appeals, where we need to build that trust and that relationship with our donor base, whatever that looks like, and that's first. That has to be first. And so when you do call for that urgent support, they're going to trust that it's real. And I think that's at the base, the foundation of all of this: the erosion of trust with social impact work because of all of this constant and loud false urgency.

Eric Ressler [00:30:20]: Yeah, I think that's it, man. And I would just add, it's the same on the team side, right? If everything's urgent all the time for your team, then that just builds in that tone. And then pretty soon people learn none of this is actually real. None of this is actually urgent. Or if it is, this is messed up. I don't want to be here where everything's a fire all the time.

So look, this is a balance. I'm not saying that this is easy. I think it's something that you need to constantly calibrate and check in on. But yeah, let's build our urgency budgets in alongside our fiscal budgets and let's use them wisely. And let's think about when we don't use them wisely, who is it that actually pays? Because it's usually our supporters or our team members and even ourselves, and it's just not worth it.

Jonathan Hicken [00:31:05]: Yeah. Hear, hear. All right. Thanks for bringing this one up, Eric.

Eric Ressler [00:31:10]: Yeah, man, thanks for unpacking it with me. If you enjoyed today's video, please be sure to hit like and subscribe or even leave us a comment. It really helps. Thank you. And thank you for all that you do for your cause and for being part of the movement to move humanity and the planet forward.