There is only one fundraising story in all of Jewish history where the problem was too much money. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus 36:6 describes it: Mosheh commanded, and they made proclamation through the camp, saying, Neither man nor woman may make any more work for the holy separation: and the people ceased from bringing.
The Targum stresses the official nature of the announcement. A herald walked through the camp. The cry went up publicly. Men and women alike were named — because, as the earlier verses noted, both had been bringing. And the people obeyed. They ceased from bringing.
Think about that phrase. They ceased from bringing. The rabbis saw this as almost as great a virtue as the giving itself. It is one thing to donate generously when asked. It is another to stop when told that further donations would be wasted. The wilderness generation managed both.
Midrash Tanchuma (Vayakhel 8) treats this moment as the moral high-water mark of the generation. The people had responded to a divine command not with reluctant minimum compliance but with joyful surplus. And then, when Moses issued a second command — enough — they responded to that one too, immediately, without resistance.
The deeper theological point: generosity and obedience are two sides of the same coin. The Israelites' eagerness to bring gold was the same quality that made them willing to stop bringing it. Both are the response of a heart aligned with its leader, a people aligned with its mission, a Tabernacle built by a nation that understood, at last, what it meant to listen.
The takeaway: knowing when to stop is its own kind of giving. The Israelites were praised as much for the hand they withdrew as for the hand they had extended.