First, Do No Harm

December 14, 2018      Kevin Schulman, Founder, DonorVoice and DVCanvass

A warning to those who have had a stillborn child – you may want to skip down to the bolded line below.

Gillian Brockell had a tweet on Tuesday about grief and algorithms worth a read:

For those who want the short version, her son, Sohan Singh Gulshan, was stillborn. Yet ads for baby things follow her around the Internet, each one a stab of pain. Even when she figured out how to turn of parenting ads, she got adoption ads, another round in the meat grinder.

I can’t claim to know her pain – we all grieve differently. But I knew and loved Gwendolyn Annette Ellinger. She too came into this world stillborn. This was many years ago, before ads were so personalized. But that didn’t stop every ad from feeling designed to trigger me, replete as ads are with happy, smiling, healthy children.

I remember watching these ads in our living room, staring vaguely at the TV and vaguely at the wall, crying as a wall clock ticked off the seconds.

Later, as part of my healing process, I beat that noisy clock to death with a hammer.

I can’t imagine how much more painful it would have been if advertisers had thought I was in the baby market and bidding eagerly to show me cribs. Passive consumption was bad enough, where every snowflake in the avalanche can plead plausible deniability. Active targeting must be excruciating.

We talk a lot about donor identity, with the excellent reasons that customizing to a donor’s identity brings in more money for our wonderful organizations and increases donor satisfaction and retention.

If those reasons are insufficient, however, consider that it’s the human and the humane thing to do.

Many nonprofits deal with those in pain. We try to prevent it. When we fail, we try to lessen it. We work with those in pain and those who care for them.

We must also, then, work not to cause them pain. Like doctors, we should aim to do no harm.

When we do not ask and do not know identity, when we spray and pray, when we go out with a message that works for all but a minority, we can cause harm.

The advertisers in Gillian’s case went out with a message that works for all but a minority. They probably didn’t even think of that minority, as they were not the target audience. They, with no malice in their hearts, caused pain and harm.

We do this too. When we treat those whose loved one is dying of the disease we aim to cure like they were every other person, we harm. Explaining the pain of hunger to someone who has lived it causes harm. One of the greatest fears of those who lose a loved one is that that loved one will be forgotten; when we forget, we trigger that fear.

False positives – when I’m targeted by ads to make a memorial gift in honor of those I did not lose, for example – are little better.

We often hear “what about the people who don’t tell us?” For those people, if you have made every effort to understand who they are and why they give, then to make that messaging about them, in my opinion, you are absolved of guilt.

If you haven’t, however…

Nick

6 responses to “First, Do No Harm”

  1. anjay nirula says:
    December 14, 2018 at 9:49 am

    Hi Nick
    Thanks for a thoughtful article. Thanks also for sharing about your own loss. It takes a lot of courage and sensitivity to tackle these types of subject and I appreciate this article. I am a parent and although I have not lost a child, I am sure it is a very painful grieving process.

    Just wanted to let you know that you and Gillian will be in my thoughts and prayers. Thanks again

  2. mary anne says:
    December 14, 2018 at 10:37 am

    In addition, in the case of the algorithim showing ads, I’m willing to be two blue M&Ms that most or all of the programmers were young and male. With a more diverse group of programmers, someone might have had enough life experience (either direct or adjacent) to say, yes but what about in X case…..

  3. Tom Ahern says:
    December 14, 2018 at 2:39 pm

    Thank you, Nick and family, for sharing this. It was a body blow … and brought me to a different appreciation of why Facebook is a mixed “blessing” and the exploitation of privacy for commercial gain could and probably should be better regulated. That exploitation might not be entirely malign, but neither is it benign. The potential for damage is real.

  4. Nick Ellinger, VP of Marketing Strategy, DonorVoice says:
    December 14, 2018 at 3:40 pm

    Thanks all for the comments. I’d add that advertisers should also be on the hook. Silicon Valley has a serious diversity problem, certainly. In addition, someone at the advertiser chose to target the ad as they did without forethought (or knowledge) on the impact. We may or may not be able to change Facebook in the near term, but as marketers we can change ourselves.

  5. Kevin Schulman says:
    December 14, 2018 at 5:27 pm

    It should not be lost that this commentary, and our primary point, goes well beyond digital advertising. In fact, one can argue, digital advertising does the best job of reducing unintended bad consequences.

    Compare it to direct mail or a host of other channels where the business as usual approach is to blast out generic, mass market material that is written, produced, scripted…with a blissful ignorance about those on the receiving end. If you can produce your communication and not know a single specific, germane thing about those on the receiving end (sorry, knowing they are older and like the “you” pronoun and they respond to “emotion and storytelling” and want to feel good about themselves is still way too generic) then your business model is one size fits none and that is, unfortunately, the status quo.

    At least digital advertising adds, at the very least, a few layers of context tied to individual behavior. It doesn’t remove all the opportunity for bad outcomes – as Nick noted – but this is more a case of a pox on both your houses then maligning Silicon Valley. In the land of the blind, they are the one eyed king in this relative world.

    Why there isn’t more standard, business process that assigns value to getting data directly from our supporters (at scale) continues to be one of the more puzzling quagmires in the sector. All the talk of ‘supporter-led’ looks empty and vapid without a crushing sense of urgency to deliver 1 to 1 at scale.

    The future is here, this is happening and is doable. Mindset, not resource, is the barrier.

  6. Claire Axelrad says:
    December 15, 2018 at 1:41 am

    I would agree with Kevin about mindset. We need to be proactive in staying abreast of what’s going on in our donor’s lives. Google alerts can help, for example, especially with major donors. And I always had someone on my staff check the obituaries regularly. In fact, my personal experience being up against people I felt didn’t give a dang didn’t happen when my stillborn daughter, Zara Amelia, was born. That was before social media and the internet, so I wasn’t hounded by inappropriate messaging. But when my husband died 8 years ago I received countless mailings from doctor’s offices that seemed not to know he’d passed away. This included an announcement from his cardiologist saying “My esteemed and dear patient… (it was informing him he was moving his office).” I wrote back that his esteemed patient might think he held him more dearly if he realized he didn’t survive his final illness. Anyway… very good points made here and in the comments.

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