Quite honestly I think it is a disgrace to hide who you really are…But if Target Analytics national index is so good help me understand. by the way who owns the index?

If 90% of your money comes from a small percentage and if the nonprofits i the index do not share the same donors giving 90% of the gifts then what of real value does the index tell you? Help me understand the impact the information from the national index actually makes?

I think NOZA makes a world of sense…If I had to chose between globalized low impact data to specific information about my actually donors I don’t think it would take anyone long to make that decision….unless the real loyalty was to keeping things the way they have always been.

When you attack our integrity, I would appreciate your not using the cloak of anonymity.

Your innuendo aside, I think you have perfectly captured the point we are making about the National Index of Fundraising Performance: it is an accurate reflection of the state of older organizations as they compare to each other.

What the Index’s perspective fails to take into account is the reality that the donor community has a much broader range of interests that goes far beyond these venerable organizations. Your investor analogy is useful. I do well in the market because I don’t rely on the Dow Jones Industrial Index as my only guide.

I am sorry that you take offence to thinking that goes beyond the comfort of what you know. Our job is to jolt our readers and our clients out of conventional comfort zones using new sources to identify important trends. Why? Because the same old data yields the same old results. This might be comfortable, but is of little help to those concerned with the future.

I find your comment about self-promotion ironic given your clear plug of the Index. Fact is, I’m a fan of the National Index and for this reason believe it is even more critical for those who use it to also look beyond their peer group. Failure to do so will result in the same predicament that for-profit companies who studied only those they deemed worthy of study found themselves in. Ask Digital Equipment (remember them?) about Dell and Microsoft, or more recently Microsoft about Google.

Watching your peer group to make sure you are not sinking faster than the others seems to me to signal that sinking is OK. We don’t accept that. And that’s why we’re urging folks to look beyond the conventional to become truly donor-centric and look at the world through the eyes of your donors. Donors look at missions, not just organizations.

As for organizations failing fast, that is the hope of every incumbent. We’re into success for everyone, not protection of the few. Rather than hope that new organizations fail, we want to know why they are succeeding. Those who take the narrow, conventional view run the risk of making the ultimate mistake … which is to blame the people who have stopped supporting them.

There are nearly 23,000 organizations in the NOZA database. We believe this far wider scope gives a more accurate picture of the nonprofit community than just the 80 organizations contained in the Index — even if that 80 is a great representation of the current leaders.

By no means are we saying stop what you are doing, we’re simply suggesting you might want to consider doing something new.

Meanwhile, we’ll keep studying the quarterly Target reports as well.

Roger

Roger (and David),

I am a long time participant in Target Analytics national index. Obviously you are not. The index is meant to compare peer organizations so that we can see how we are doing against each other. Your entire premise is wrong.

Next, I am guessing you are using NOZA data in your “True Givers” file and you should state that as your data source or one of your data sources.

Finally, you observation about ‘category competition’ is only partially right. You must not invest much of your money in the stock market or, if you do, you are not a savvy investor. There is something called “Same Store Sales” that better be going up…if not the store/stock is in trouble. If the trend is down – you better hope that the National Index (your peers) is trending the same way or you ARE going to be out of business and will end up in the heap of has-beens.

Even the two of you must understand – for a start up it is easy to have 20%, 50 even 400% growth – but they also fizzle out and FAIL just as quickly. So what good is all of that supposed growth if the fail rate is still high in the first 5 years?

I hope other readers can see through the self-promotion that these two guys are doing in their past 2 or 3 articles. It is really disappointing because they use to have a good reputation, now I don’t know if I would hire or associate either of them with my organization.

Sarah

Also, Target and this current Agitator Post do not account for the growing impact of Web donations, which are often not tracked back to direct mail campaigns even if they stem from mail. This likely varies widely by organization, but is growing overall.