Money Trauma Drama for API Fundraisers: What We Carry, How We Heal

“No conversation about cross-cultural fundraising is complete without considering how our Asian Pacific Islander cultural identities and familial histories have impacted our relationships with money—both good and bad.”

This sentence sparked an emotionally charged discussion about Money Trauma Drama—a tough realization that helped to bring together API fundraisers from many different geographic locations across our nonprofit sector.

Hidden Weight of Fundraising 

Money Trauma Drama didn’t start with us—but we carry it. In the boardrooms and during budget meetings. Through donor interactions and staff evaluations. Across grant applications and special event gala scripts.

Our families survived colonization, genocide, war, forced migration, and exclusion laws. They adapted. They stretched every dollar to meet basic needs. They created more financial opportunities with less access to monetary resources. And they passed on economic lessons—sometimes helpful, but often shaped by scarcity, shame, secrecy, and sheer survival.

“Trauma decontextualized in a person looks like personality.
Trauma decontextualized in a family looks like family traits.
Trauma decontextualized in people looks like culture.”
—Resmaa Menakem, therapist and author

As API fundraisers, these internalized histories directly influence how we relate to money, power dynamics, and philanthropy.

Fundraising Is Not Culturally Neutral

Fundraising, like philanthropy, is often shaped by dominant norms combined with Western definitions of generosity and success. It’s a problem when more than 38% of nonprofit professionals identify as people of color, but less than 6% of executive leadership roles are held by API individuals.¹

This disconnect often shows up in how fundraisers of color are treated on the job:

• 57% of fundraisers of color report experiencing workplace bias, impacting their professional growth and well-being.²
• 38% of BIPOC fundraisers have considered leaving the profession due to a lack of inclusion or advancement opportunities.³
• The "overhead myth" and pressure to meet unrealistic donor expectations without context for systemic inequities compounds stress for fundraisers—especially those with marginalized identities.⁴
• Funding Disparities: Only 7% of foundation giving is dedicated to supporting POC-serving nonprofits, despite their critical role in communities.⁵ 

Now add this layer: Many API fundraisers are also navigating first-generation expectations, immigrant family obligations, and workplace cultures that fail to understand or validate our lived experiences.

Let’s talk about the unspoken.

Let’s talk about families who didn’t—or couldn’t—teach us how to talk about wealth in a healthy way.

Let’s talk about ways our communities express generosity outside of tax-deductible receipts.

Let’s also talk about the brilliance we bring to the table, because of and despite these challenges—we foster mutual aid, collective care, resourcefulness, and authenticity.

This is the work of healing. 

AANHPI Heritage Month and Asian Heritage Month: Honoring Complexity

May is Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander (AANHPI) Heritage Month and Asian Heritage Month in Canada, to affirm the messy, beautiful complexities of our stories.

To those code-switching in board finance committee meetings. To those exhausted, lonely and isolated as “the only fill-in-the-blank” in your development department: We see you. We honor your resilience, your “failure is not an option” mindset, your creativity, and your cultural wisdom.

Many of us are probably still unpacking the trauma and drama that happened in our family’s history because that history remains largely unrecognized and undocumented. If you’re an immigrant, unpacking becomes an even more complicated process because no one else in the room can truly understand your experiences, give you grace when mistakes are made, or recognize the fragmented journey you are on.

We invite you to keep healing—with us, in community.

We’re grateful to have found each other—first through AFP ICON in New Orleans three years ago, and now regularly through the API Affinity Group and our collaborations with Community Centric Fundraising. Together with many other brilliant, supportive, and authentic API fundraisers, we’ve cultivated a space where we can reflect, laugh, cry, and rebuild.

It’s where we can be fully ourselves—from talking about “money trauma” to explaining our jobs to parents who still don’t understand (or admit to their friends) what we do, to navigating difficult donor conversations.

You are not alone. We hope to connect with you soon and often.

Sincerely,
Jennifer and Liyen
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✨ Connect With Community

🔹 Join the AFP Asian Pacific Islander Affinity Group
Date: Wednesday, May 21, 2025
Time: 12:00 p.m. PT / 3:00 p.m. ET
Topic: Difficult Conversations with Donors & Funders
This month, we’re naming and navigating the very real dynamics fundraisers of color face in their professional roles. This safe space is designed for API-identifying fundraisers to find support and share strategies.
👉 RSVP here

🔹 Join they API Private LinkedIn Group
Continue the conversation when you need it and how you need it. Share your voice and build community.
👉 Join the API Affinity Group on LinkedIn

🔹 Explore Community-Centric Fundraising
Date: Wednesday, May 28, 2025
Time: 7:00 a.m. PT / 10:00 a.m. ET
Topic: Rooted & Rising: A Community-Centric Conference for Fundraisers.
Take a collective breath and ground yourself in community. Together, we’ll reimagine fundraising rooted in courage, solidarity, and social justice during an inaugural virtual event.
👉 RSVP here

🔹 Asians in Community-Centric Fundraising
Date: Saturday, May 14, 2025
Time: 4:00 p.m. PT / 7:00 p.m. ET
Topic: Join the discussion, “Navigating justice as the ‘model’ minority: Asian solidarity and allyship in BIPOC movements,” by Rachel D'Souza and Esther Saehyun Lee 
👉 Join IG Live
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Sources

1. Statista. (2023). Race to Lead: Confronting the Nonprofit Racial Leadership Gap – Building Movement Project
2. Candid. (2024). Diversity in the nonprofit sector: Demographic data report. The Burden of Bias in Fundraising – Chronicle of Philanthropy, 2021.
3. Association of Fundraising Professionals IDEA Survey, 2020. Building Movement Project. (2021). Race to Lead: Confronting the Nonprofit Racial Leadership Gap.
4. Nonprofit AF – “The Overhead Myth is Rooted in White Supremacy” by Vu Le
5. Kim, M., & Li, B. (2023). Financial Challenges of Nonprofits Serving People of Color: Original Survey Results.