Yesterday on his Future Fundraising Now blog (before which The Agitator often genuflects), Jeff Brooks proffered The case against innovation.
It seems he tried to innovate once and failed. But now he’s made a second mistake, he’s broadly generalized from that experience and concludes: “If you want your fundraising to work, stick to the conventions.”
Wow … is that bad advice!
Most fundraising is not working these days precisely because folks are blindly sticking to conventions.
The Agitator has nothing against conventions. We’ve often ranted that fundraisers, especially newbies, insist on either re-inventing the wheel or ignoring practices that have heaps of current empirical evidence to support them.
But we would never elevate our reverence for the ‘true and tested’ to a cardinal rule like “stick to the conventions.”
Firstly, because even old ‘best practices’ need to be re-tested and re-examined. If only from a “Is this the best tactic given my nonprofit’s circumstances?” standpoint.
But secondly, as Roger has been cautioning, because a hell of a lot of nonprofits are going down the tubes if they don’t innovate … at least trialing more up-to-date tools and concepts. That’s what his Flat Earth Fundraising series of posts is all about. Just search ‘Flat Earth Fundraising’ on our site … here’s the first in the series.
C’mon Jeff, you don’t really think there’s a case against innovation, do you?
Tom
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I think Jeff’s point actually is, you don’t dump the tried and true for the hip and trendy. Innovation for the sake of being “cutting edge” and hip is very different from innovating to improve results.
There is a lot of hip & trendy marketing being driven by agencies and people new to the field who have no idea about the short term or long term goals of fundraising. They think being hip will save the day and it just doesn’t.
Fundraising innovation needs to be focused on the right goals and judged by the bottom line. I don’t want to hear “it raised awareness” or “it was really cool”. I want to hear how it impacted the bottom line…I’m a fundraiser…I’m funny like that.
This reminds me of what I tell the high school students I volunteer with; if you don’t have a better idea, do what is conventional (and apply to college). As Jeff says, “When you flout the conventions, no matter how cool it is, you make everything harder.” That certainly has a ring of truth to it, and so I believe erring on the side of caution to be sage advice. If as a fundraiser, you have a really great idea that is relevant and smart, it makes sense to go for it. Otherwise, just stick to the tried and true.