Award Winning Blog

The Barcode’s Birthday and Its Role in Fundraising World

In the Muzak -misted modern marketplaces, amidst the rhythmic beep of machines, lies a revolution so profound yet so quietly integrated into the fabric of our daily lives that it scarcely draws attention. This revolution, now marking its 50th anniversary, is none other than the barcode—that modest stripe of black and white that’s silently reshaped […]

Learn More February 9, 2024

To Ask or Not to Ask: The Shakespearean Dilemma of Fundraising

If people enjoy giving, then why avoid a fundraising ask? Being solicited and the joy that can arrive from being charitable are not synonymous. Heck, sometimes they aren’t even far-flung cousins. Relatedly, the act of giving is not what brings joy. It’s how the person feels afterwards. I don’t give because I feel sad, I […]

Learn More February 7, 2024

Breaking Up with Warm Glow: Why Your Donors Deserve a Deeper Flame

People like to give because it fosters a warm glow. Therefore, more asking equals more opportunities for this warm glow. Ergo, donors are happy, satisfied, and fueled with positive motivation to keep giving contingent on you continually asking. When I see this logic train cited it conjures up a record player’s arm lifted, the needle […]

Learn More February 5, 2024

When Avocados Met Toast: A Millennial Love Story Gone Too Far

Once upon a time, in a galaxy far too obsessed with demographics, fundraisers posing as researchers discovered young people crave authenticity, sustainability, and trustworthiness. And, in a stroke of genius, they declared these desires exclusive to the young, as if generations before had thrived on artificiality, wastefulness, and deceit. The hilarious notion that these values […]

Learn More February 2, 2024

Use Case #3,468 for GPT: Surveys

You’ll find what I imagine to be at least 3,467 use-cases splattered across the internet. That makes this example, use case 3,468 and it’s uber novel, using GPT to generate survey research responses. That’s right, a machine answering survey questions and using a wash/repeat method to produce a dataset of say, 1,000 responses. That may […]

Learn More January 31, 2024

Does Your A/B (Testing) Need to Meet C and D?

What do 127,000 experiments over five years from a variety of sectors, including fundraising, tell us about what’s required to run better experiments? First, let’s define better: higher chance of winning and bigger uplift, which creates a multiplier for expected impact; the % chance of winning * likely uplift = expected impact. Here’s our take […]

Learn More January 29, 2024