How Empathy Can Prevent Fundraiser Burnout

In this thoughtful and deeply human episode of The First Day from The Fund Raising School, host Bill Stanczykiewicz, Ed.D., welcomes Alison Jane Martingano, Ph.D., Assistant Professor at the University of Wisconsin–Green Bay, for a fascinating conversation about empathy, burnout, and what fundraisers can learn from research rooted in healthcare. With clarity, warmth, and just the right amount of scientific precision, Alison Jane unpacks a deceptively simple idea: empathy is not just a feel-good virtue, it can actually help protect professionals from burnout. For fundraisers, whose work is built on connection, compassion, and constant attention to others, that insight lands with particular force. This episode makes a compelling case that understanding how we empathize may be just as important as the fact that we do. A key strength of the conversation is its careful distinction between different types of empathy. Alison Jane explains that empathy is not one single emotional blob, but a multidimensional concept that includes cognitive empathy, empathic concern, and emotional contagion or distress. Cognitive empathy is the ability to understand what someone else is thinking or feeling without becoming overwhelmed yourself. Empathic concern is the warm, compassionate response that keeps the focus on the other person. Those two forms of empathy, she explains, are associated with less burnout. The problem arises with distress-based empathy, when a person does not merely care about someone else’s suffering but begins to carry it internally, mirroring the pain as their own. That distinction becomes one of the episode’s most useful takeaways: feeling for others can sustain us, while feeling overwhelmed with them can slowly wear us down. Bill does an especially effective job translating the research into the daily reality of fundraising, where professionals are constantly immersed in stories of need, urgency, and hope. Fundraisers are, by nature and by job description, intensely other-focused. They advocate for people experiencing hunger, illness, educational barriers, housing insecurity, and countless other challenges. Alison Jane suggests that this outward focus may actually be a source of resilience, so long as it remains grounded in compassion rather than self-consuming distress. In one of the episode’s clearest and most memorable formulations, the conversation draws a bright line between being inspired to help and carrying another person’s suffering “like a bag of bricks.” That difference matters. It gives fundraisers permission to care deeply without believing they must emotionally collapse in order to prove that care is real. As the episode concludes, Alison Jane offers an important note of honesty and restraint: empathy may be preventative, but it is not curative. Once true burnout has taken hold, the answer is not simply to care harder or dig deeper emotionally. Burnout, she explains, is a structural problem caused by too many demands and too few resources, and that means real solutions must include institutional support, reduced stressors, and healthier workplace conditions. Bill closes by reinforcing why psychology matters so much in fundraising in the first place; philanthropy is fundamentally about human connection. Donors, volunteers, and fundraisers alike are driven by meaning, identity, and emotion. The episode’s final message is both reassuring and wise: empathy, when practiced in healthy ways, can help fundraisers stay connected to their mission without losing themselves in the process.