Among the hackneyed phrases I most detest: “There are no bad ideas.”

Sometimes the phrase is offered up at the start of “brainstorming” sessions, to encourage the shy.  Sometimes it’s delivered to invisible eye-rolls and silent sighs by the chair of the board or a big donor. Civility and silence at any price.

But, the “sometimes” I care most about is when a truly awful, terrible, no good, very bad idea goes unchallenged because it’s delivered by a boss or someone of perceived authority or status.

The fact is there are bad ideas.  And, in reality they’re dangerous if not crushed.

They’re not bad because the person delivering the idea isn’t as smart as you or has a title or status higher than your own.

They’re bad because they represent a chasm between their understanding of the donor and reality.

As a fundraiser a key part of your job is to kill bad ideas. Period.

Here are 5 Tips to “close the knowledge chasm” (read, “kill the stupid idea”), keep your fundraising program on track, and keep your job.

Killer #1. Educate the Old and the Young. Ignorance isn’t limited to the young—or the old; it’s universal in every trade.

Older board members or bosses, perhaps trying to appear hip, often come up with an idea like, “Direct mail costs too much, digital is free. Let’s dump mail and do all our fundraising with email and Facebook.”

Or, perhaps a young Development Director, zealously aiming to bring the organization into the 21^stcentury, may look down on analog stuff like “expensive” thank you notes…personal phone calls…and other time-consuming activities with the idea that “SEO is where it’s at. Let’s take that acknowledgement and onboarding budget and put it into search and other digital goodies.”

Your job is to take the time to non-judgmentally explain the practical/financial/technological limitations of the other person’s idea and even build on that idea, so it pays dividends for the organization –and your career. As in, “direct mail is far from dead, and here’s why” or “yes, indeed it would be great if the public, and especially our donors, could get the information they want quickly and easily.”

(Of course, you as a regular Agitatorreader will be well prepared to shine the beam of factual insight on every side of these questions.)

Killer #2.  Focus “Why” Donors Give.  Sooner or later in your career you’re going to be confronted with the brilliant idea to “change”, “improve” or “sharpen” or even “extend” your organization’s value proposition and brand.

After all, if Organization Ais attracting loyal supporters by saving baby racoons why wouldn’t Super, Improved Organization A(with a swell new logo, of course) do even better by saving allbaby animals?

You can easily make the mistake of falling for a different, grander vision unless you know ‘why’ your current donors support you. (“I’m a racoon person, and don’t care much about panthers.”)

A well-understood reason why donors give should serve as True North for every organization. New ideas, new investments should be viewed positively and explored further only if they serve and motivate your donors better than anything else.

Killer #3. Live the Donor Experience.  I’ve been in hundreds of meetings where everyone on the staff, board, and front office has their own experience of what donors want, and what ‘donor journey’ they should offer.

Yet, unbelievable as it seems almost no one in those rooms had any knowledge of what real donors felt, what they experienced, or how satisfied or unsatisfied they were.  No mystery shopping reports…no feedback reports of problems frustrated donors encountered on the donate page…no knowledge of what happened when donors called the ‘help’ line –or even if they could find a phone number for it.

A skilled and informed fundraiser will be able to meet new ideas and be better able to support or oppose them, if armed with real knowledge of the lived donor experience.

Killer #4. Know Your Competition. Nonprofits have competition –1.5 million of ‘em—whether we like to admit it or not.

Failure to recognize that our organization competes in a crowded field leads to organizational-centric ideas and behavior.  “Why don’t we ignore Facebook and Twitter and have our own meeting/communication place on our own website?”

Of course, if we operated in a vacuum, that may be a good idea.  But, we don’t and failure to be alert to—and familiar with– the other options that exist out there for our donors will result in dumb and dangerous decisions.

Killer #5. Test and Report.  Believe it or not, real data is better than conjecture in proving an idea good or bad.

Sometimes you’ll have the opportunity to run an A/B test and show the progenitor of the idea real results when her/his idea is executed. And sometimes, you’ll be able to discover test results from an analogous idea tested by another organization.  (Again, Agitatorreaders are particularly advantaged.)

With the test results in hand you can present the Idea Maker with evidence of exactly how much revenue the idea will gain or lose for your organization.

Facts are powerful repellants for bad ideas.

For an entertaining, on-point example take a look this short, fun video series titled Fight the Squirrel from MarketingExperiments showing how a team of marketers persuaded their boss that featuring squirrels on the company’s website and in its marketing materials was a bad idea.

A word of caution.

Please, please remember that bad ideas don’t come from bad people.  https://marketingexperiments.com  In the fundraising trade they rise and thrive because we’ve forgotten about the central importance of the donor in judging the merits of new ideas.

And…unless you’re up to speed on ‘why’ your donors give to you and why they stick with you there’s also the danger you may dismiss a good idea that’s worth trying.

Roger