Do You See the Jets Coming?
I’ve been working in fundraising a long, long time.
Long enough to have wrestled with metal addressograph plates to print donors’ names on envelopes. . I’ve seen the shift from carbon paper to cloud drives, from licking stamps to launching SMS campaigns, from typewriters to predictive analytics so sophisticated they can tell you what time of day a lapsed donor is most likely to click on a subject line containing the word “panda.”
But I don’t remember a change quite as sudden—or quite as symbolic—as what happened when I was in college in 1959.
Let me tell you a story about a place called Gander, Newfoundland.
In the late 1950s. Gander was hot stuff. It sat at the edge of North America, perfectly placed to catch every plane trying to get to Europe back when aircraft still needed to stop and refuel.
The Canadians who had just inherited Newfoundland from the British decided to build a world-class airport terminal. And build it they did. The thing had terrazzo floors. Imported furniture. Mid-century modern murals. Even Queen Elizabeth showed up to open the doors in 1959.
They called it the “Crossroads of the World.”
It had a shopping center. A transit lounge. A fountain. Duty-free whiskey. For a brief period, Gander thrived as a glamorous stopover where famous figures mingled; The Beatles first set foot in North America at Gander, and Fidel Castro was even photographed browsing in the airport’s gift shop during a layover. Everything seemed set for Gander to enjoy a long future as a key transatlantic gateway.
And then it was obsolete nearly as soon as the paint dried.
You see, the jet age arrived. By the end of the 1950s and early 1960s, second-generation jet aircraft with longer ranges began entering service, and they were capable of flying nonstop between North America and Europe, bypassing Newfoundland. Suddenly, planes didn’t need to stop and refuel in Newfoundland to cross the Atlantic. Gander’s big shiny terminal became a kind of architectural ghost town with fresh tile work.
One year: global hub. Next year: break room for migrating geese.
The Jets Are Coming Again
Why am I telling you this? Because we fundraisers may be entering our Gander moment.
You, dear Reader, may be building something gorgeous—a killer email campaign, a digital acquisition strategy, a content calendar, a predictive model—only to wake up and realize it’s 1959 and Pan Am just bought a jet.
What I’ve learned from Gander and the subsequent 60+ years in this trade is the riskiest thing you can do in this work is count on the status quo.
You think you’ve got time. You think donors will wait. You think what worked last year will work again this year. Then the jets come. And your beautiful plan is left sitting in fog.
Today, the jets are coming again. Donors are leaving. Costs are up. Retention’s down. AI’s writing more than you are.Inbox flooding and fatigue are growing. Nobody reads most organizations’ newsletters because they’re still written like an IRS bulletin. And meanwhile, some guy with a podcast and a rescue pitbull is pulling in more recurring donors than your annual appeal.
And your best prospect is probably someone you forgot to call, or thank last year.
Our World is Changing. Fast.
If you share the sense we may be approaching a Gander moment you have two choices: You can double down and repeat what you’ve always done; or, you can do what always works.
People are scared—and for good reason. They’re watching democracy strain, climate disasters multiply, and their own financial security erode. In this chaos, your donors aren’t just looking for a cause to support; they’re looking for proof that individual action still matters. They need to feel seen and valued, not like ATM machines for your mission. A personal mid-year note does something no algorithm can: it proves a human being noticed their generosity and cared enough to say so.
So what do you do?
You send them a mid-year message. Not a “quarterly stewardship initiative.” Not a “donor engagement asset.” A letter. A note. A gesture. A surprise. A mirror. Tell the donor she matters. Thank her. Recognize her. Show her what she made possible.
And do it now—mid-year—when it still counts.
Two-thirds of all charitable giving happens between October and year-end.
This means today, right now is your warm-up time. Not your summer break.
Write a mid-year letter or note. Not a fancy report. Just a message. A personal, heartfelt sign that someone’s paying attention to her or him.
Here’s what belongs in your Mid-Year Message
- A thank-you. Simple. Personal and heartfelt. Direct.
- A result. One thing that happened because of her gift.
- A quote. Someone she helped. Let them speak.
- A number. How many gave. How many were helped. Something small and believable.
- A look ahead. Not a pitch or an ask. Just a signpost to alert her to what’s coming.
- By postal mail, with a real signature with a handwritten a one sentence note. Smudge it if you’re able to.
Why Now?
The world feels off. But when you write—when you tell the truth, say thank you, and let people feel useful again—something shifts. They remember and trust you. They hold on. And you hold on to them.
This isn’t complicated. It’s not expensive. It doesn’t require AI or a blockchain. It just takes one person giving a damn about another person.
I hear from lots of small orgaizations who take the time to be quite personal and it pays dividends. Imagine Last year, a small animal shelter in Oregon sending 200 handwritten mid-year notes. Nothing fancy—just a Polaroid of a rescued dog and three sentences thanking each donor by name. Result? Their year-end campaign raised 34% more than the previous year, and 89% of those note recipients gave again. The total cost? Seventy-three dollars in stamps and two afternoons of volunteer time.
Don’t wait for October when every other nonprofit is screaming for attention. Write that letter or send that postcard this week. Address it by hand at least.
Your donors are standing at their own crossroads, deciding whether to keep supporting you or move on to someone who makes them feel valued. Show them you’re worth the stop.
Roger
8 responses to “Do You See the Jets Coming?”
Behavioral Science Q & A
Thanks so much for raising this. Yes, capturing donor information can be helpful for stewardship like newsletters, thank-you letters, impact updates. But how you ask matters. Forcing full data capture introduces friction that can significantly depress conversion, many donors may simply abandon the process. Beyond the friction itself, required fields also shift the emotional experience […]
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Unlike holidays that everyone already knows, Giving Tuesday is a created event. Many donors recognize the name but not the exact timing, so referencing it becomes a helpful cue. It serves as a reminder and taps into social norm activation (“everyone’s giving today”), which boosts response. However, we still want it paired with the mission, […]
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When a subject line leads with the match (“Your gift matched!”), it risks triggering market-norm thinking: the sense that giving is a financial transaction rather than an act rooted in values, identity, and care. This shift reduces intrinsic motivation and, over time, can weaken donor satisfaction and long-term engagement. It also makes the email indistinguishable […]
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There’s no evidence that QR codes suppress mid-value giving; all available research suggests they either help or have no negative effect. In fact, behavioral and usability research consistently shows the opposite: reducing friction at any point in the donation process increases completion rates and total response. And that has nothing to do with capacity and […]
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What you’re experiencing is very common. Resistance often isn’t about capability, but about motivation quality. If board members feel pushed into fundraising, that triggers controlled motivation (low quality motivation) i.e. obligation, guilt, or fear of judgment, which often results in avoidance. Instead, we need to create conditions for volitional motivation (high quality motivation) by satisfying […]
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That’s a really thoughtful question, and you’re not the first to raise it. Many of our clients have been cautious about placing the ask at the very end. To address their concern, we’ve tested both approaches, and the results are clear: when the ask comes last, even if that means it appears on the second […]
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Ah Roger. Thank you. Once again, your thought-for-the-day is a full cup of superbly-written wise advice compellingly wrapped around a colourful and relevant anecdote (our fundraising world is indeed at a crossroads now). And your suggested solution is concise, deliciously simple, unchallengeable and should be easy to implement and maintain. The challenge, though, is to get each organisation’s fundraising leadership to take it on and make it stick throughout their teams. How to do donor development is well documented. But ignorance of why it’s needed and where to find it remains overwhelming. That’s where successive versions of this oh-so-needed message seem to have come unstuck. It’s not a new dilemma, but it is increasingly urgent. Do we now need a new approach to fundraising’s too lax leadership?
Ahhhh yes, Ken. You nailed it as you have for decades: Fundraising Leadership.
That rare species of mammal that talks about “donor journey mapping” while ignoring the map, the road, and the donor sitting in the back seat screaming for a snack.
You’re right, of course. We all know what to do. It’s not classified. It’s not locked in a safe in the basement of the Smithsonian or your Natural History Museum.
And yet—here we are. Still watching organizations stare at the donor like a teenager stares at a dishwasher: vaguely aware it needs attention, deeply unsure how it works, and mostly hoping someone else will take care of it.
We’ve written manuals and books. We’ve shared the data. We’ve built the dashboards, the workflows, the auto-responders, and the slick-as-snake-oil CRMs. We’ve held the webinars, the summits, the retreats at hotels with ethically ambiguous minibar charges. And still—somewhere out there—a VP of Development is triple-confirming that his March thank-you emails will go out sometime in August, right after he finishes his third “strategic planning” Zoom of the week.
You ask if we need a new approach to lax leadership. Let’s be honest: we need a cattle prod. Or at the very least, a two-by-four with “DONOR RETENTION IS CHEAPER THAN ACQUISITION” engraved in Comic Sans font.
Because this isn’t a mystery. This isn’t a puzzle box. It’s stewardship. Gratitude. Listening. And apparently, we need to disguise it as a “growth strategy” or wrap it in a blockchain to get anyone in a corner office to care.
So yes, let’s send another version of this message out. Let’s send ten. But maybe this time, instead of calling it a “mid-year report,” let’s call it what it is: Proof you’re not asleep at the wheel.
And if that doesn’t work, I say we load the next one into a tranquilizer dart and tag the C-suite like the slow moving rhinos so many are. At least then we’ll know where to find them when budget season comes around.
Sadly, these are people who wouldn’t recognize urgency if it showed up holding a “Match Tripled” sign and holding a check for $100,000. The donor’s right there, waving. The retention curve is cratering. And the development office is caught in committee like a kayak in Niagara Falls.
What’s needed now is not another PowerPoint. It’s a middle-of-the-year reckoning. Start with one letter. To one donor. About one thing they made possible. And if leadership can’t get behind that? Hand them a boarding pass to Gander.
Persist, Ken. Persist.
Take the spreadsheets away and good things will happen.
Mark, you magnificent heretic—
If we had a nickel for every time a spreadsheet strangled a good idea in its cradle, we could retire and open a sanctuary for neglected donor thank-you notes.
You’re right in your observation, “Take the spreadsheets away and good things will happen.”
Suddenly, you’re not obsessing over the 0.04% delta between Q2 and Q3 open rates.
You’re calling a donor who hasn’t heard from you since Obama’s first term.
You’re telling a story instead of stacking numbers like firewood.
You’re remembering that human beings don’t weep at pivot tables.
Somewhere along the way, fundraising turned into a cult for KPIs. We started worshipping dashboards and forgot the donor’s name. We’ve got teams A/B testing font sizes while forgetting to say thank you with a full sentence.
It’s not that data’s the enemy. It’s that we handed it the keys to the car and told it to drive blindfolded.
So yes, Mark. Strip the formulas. Lock the macros. Walk into a meeting with nothing but a donor’s story and a pulse. You might just raise more money. Or better yet—raise some hell.
Roger, this is very helpful. Everyone is struggling right now and seems paralyzed. The old way of doing things is clearly no longer working.
It seems so simple to just reconnect. Thanks for sharing specific ideas.
Stephen, great to hear from you. You’re right, of course. Everything feels complicated right now, but the solution is probably hiding in plain sight, wearing a name tag that says: “Just reach out, dummy.”
We’ve built systems to automate gratitude, platforms to scale empathy, and CRMs that claim to know your donors better than their own kids do—but somewhere along the way, we forgot to call. Or write. Or wave vaguely in their direction like a half-decent neighbor.
Glad the post resonated. Sometimes I think fundraising is just an elaborate reminder that basic human decency is still the best strategy on the planet. Two-way communication, recognition, a little politeness… wild stuff, right?
Roger, only you (well, maybe one or two others… looking at you, Tom) could make the replies to the comments every bit as entertaining as the post on which they were commenting. “…vaguely aware it needs attention, deeply unsure how it works, and mostly hoping someone else will take care of it” applies in sadly far too many situations these days than just fundraising (or teenagers, one of which I was once… a LONG time ago). Keep stirring the pot and calling BS when you see it, good sir; until we perfect cloning, there is only one of you and far too many minions worshipping the embroidery of the (naked) emperor’s shiny new clothes.
Thanks much Marc. If you’re forced to choose between clones pick the Ahern model. Less milage.
Cheers