Magnus Carlsen is one of the greatest chess players of all time and didn’t just master the game, he got bored of it.  So he helped popularize Chess960, a version where the back-row pieces are shuffled around.  He did this to help players stop their overreliance on memorized openings and forcing them to think, not just recall.

That’s because most elite chess isn’t about seeing more, it’s about remembering more. Pattern recognition, mental shortcuts built on decades of repetition. And when the pattern fits, it works. But when it doesn’t?  That muscle memory becomes a liability.  The likelihood of losing a Chess960 match went up considerably using traditional openings and yet most experienced players continued relying on them.

Fundraising “best practices” are nothing if not memorized openings:

• Add a matching gift
• Include a premium
• Ask more, raise more
• Multichannel – i.e. cranking stuff out everywhere and confusing cause with effect
• Worry about fatigue never
• Rely heavily of wildly wrong (ROAS anyone) or incomplete (cost to acquire) short term metrics

All this drawn from years, often decades, of experience.  All optimized for the board as it used to be but the board has changed and it’s not subtle.

We send the same thing to everyone, we send the same stuff as everyone else and we send to the same people.  Charities aren’t just overfishing, they’re all crowding into the same tiny pond, using the same bait, and casting at the same fish. And when one bites?  They catch it, pull it in, take the donation and then toss it back into the same pool, already stressed and less likely to bite again.

Then they throw the line right back on top of it. It’s not just overfishing. It’s catch-and-release with a megaphone, repeated until the water’s empty.

The short-term, performance-driven playbook that once “worked” is now collapsing under its own weight.  Response rates are down, yields are shrinking, donor trust is wearing thin and almost no one is building brand or value, just pipelines.

It’s not about tweaking the old model. It’s about asking different questions:

• Not how many times can we ask but how often should we ask to avoid irritation and quitting?

(DonorVoice: ask less, time it to personal cadence. “Mode of 1” modeling tells us when.)

• Not which premium converts better — but what actually increases emotional payoff and satisfaction?

(DonorVoice: run tests that measure not just response, but post-gift feeling and retention.)

• Not how to target better — but how to tailor the message to who the person is?

(DonorVoice: identity + personality tagging. Don’t personalize to fake proxies; match the mission to the individual.)

• Not how to grow a donor file fastest — but how to build a meaningful relationship portfolio over time?

(Hint: brand building isn’t a luxury. It’s the long game. And the only game left.)

The muscle memory of tactics won’t solve a structural problem.  That’s why the board feels broken, because we’re still playing the same game on it.  Time to shuffle the pieces.

Kevin