Flat Earth Fundraising: Moneyball
I have a suggestion for the conference planners at AFP, DMA, CASE and every other association in our nonprofit galaxy: Scrap two hours, 13 minutes of “seen this, heard that” sessions, serve free popcorn, and treat your registrants to a screening of Moneyball.
I’m serious. Here’s why.
Moneyball, the 2003 iconoclastic bestseller by Michael Lewis — now a very popular and acclaimed movie starring Brad Pitt — is an entertaining and effective study in successful and counterproductive behaviors. I recommend it as ‘must reading’ or ‘must viewing’ for all fundraisers, development committees, boards and executive directors.
“It’s the biography of an idea,” says Moneyball author Michael Lewis. It deals not only with wins and losses, but also with the quest of a man who wanted to revolutionize a sport; someone who, in Lewis’ words was willing “to rethink baseball: how it is managed, how it is played, and who is best suited to play it, and why.”
That man was Billy Beane (charmingly played by Brad Pitt) the provocative general manager of the Oakland A’s with unconventional ideas about what a team with limited resources could do to compete with wealthy powerhouses like the New York Yankees. Billy takes on the system by challenging the fundamental tenets of the game. He looks outside the conventions of baseball with its cherished dependence on the intuition of scouts and hires a brainy young number-crunching Harvard-educated economist to help him figure out a better way.
Together they tackle conventional wisdom with a willingness to reexamine everything. Armed with computer-driven statistical analysis long ignored by the baseball establishment, they go after players overlooked and dismissed by the business-as-usual baseball world for being too odd, too old, too injured or too much trouble, but all of whom have key skills that are universally undervalued.
As they forge forward, their new methods and roster of misfits rile the old guard, the media, the fans. Using ‘sabermetrics’ (data analytics) the Oakland A’s found the good players they could afford, while successfully challenging many tenets of baseball’s hallowed conventional wisdom.
And just as in every other specialized field of human endeavor the detractors, the old-guard and the high priest experts argued that this focus on numbers dehumanized the game and ignored the intangibles that only ’trained scouts’ could see.
Although data analytics is an element in the story, that’s not really what Moneyball is about. More broadly it’s a real-life story of innovating to succeed, or as Billy Beane puts it in the movie, “Adapt or die.” Beane the entrepreneur innovating out of necessity.
And so it is in today’s world of nonprofit fundraising, communications and management. More than ever survival depends on innovation, the willingness to challenge old assumptions and, to no small degree, the ability to discover and use better measurements, benchmarks and other metrics that are based on more than myth and convention. Metrics that help us more strategically, accurately and competitively steer a course into a successful future.
It’s more than coincidence that Moneyball begins with a quote from Yankees star Mickey Mantle: “It’s unbelievable how much you don’t know about the game you’ve been playing all your life.”
Ain’t that the truth. And for this reason over the next few posts in our “Flat Earth Fundraising” series, and with your help and suggestions, I want to focus on challenging some of the conventional wisdom and fundamental tenants in our craft, while also introducing you to some innovative approaches that might help us all change the game for the better.
What sacred cows would you like to challenge?
Roger
P.S. Interested in innovation? Then try the webinar I’m moderating that will present a new approach and tool for pre-testing packages, developed by DonorVoice. Seats in the February 9th (11:30 EST) Direct Mail Testing Webinar are going fast. Agitator Readers can register here FREE.
4 responses to “Flat Earth Fundraising: Moneyball”
Behavioral Science Q & A
Integrating an individual giving appeal with other communications from a charity can have both positive and negative effects, and the outcome largely depends on how it’s executed. Advantages of Integration Brand Consistency: Maintaining a consistent appearance and messaging across all communications can reinforce the org’s brand identity and strengthen brand recognition and trust among your […]
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I’m not aware of any in-market tests specifically comparing recurring vs. gift frequency language. I suspect the answer might not be the same with all gift frequencies, nor with all people. It sounds like a great opportunity for you to test and find out what works for your audience. Based on the literature, here’s a couple […]
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Based on what we know from existing data, those renewal notices can actually be pretty effective in getting people to donate. They tap into our psychology – creating a sense of urgency, reminding us of past support, and using personalization to make the message hit home. They’re playing on our natural tendencies to feel obligated […]
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Interesting question. I had a quick look at the testing done on this topic. On the positive side, in all cases, over half of donors decide to cover the fee. In some cases, it goes as high as 65%. Not a negligible percentage at all. Here’s another test from iRaiser showing consistent results (see point […]
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There’s just one thing to consider when designing a supporter journey: the supporter. More specifically, you need to take into account: Who the supporter is i.e. their identity, which is the reason they support this cause, and their personality, which describes the way they “see” and process the world. These will determine the kind of […]
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I’m not an expert in this but a quick search surfaced this article on the effect of tax reforms on 2019’s charitable giving. The researchers didn’t find a reduction. Actually, they observed an “increase in charitable contributions in 2019, even with the lower tax rates and the dramatically smaller number of taxpayers who itemize their […]
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Organizations (charities and agencies) need to kill the sacred cow called silos. That worked fine in the 80’s and 90’s when everything was about mail. Channels today are not linear yet that’s how so many plan, execute and analyze.
Everyone is talking about it, yet few seem to be addressing it. It is the best way to optimize spending and maximize ROI. And, it is only going to grow in importance as technology leads to more market fragmentation.
Yes, it’s painful to change people, goals, budgets and technology, but there is a simple process that gains buy-in, improves collaboration and reorganizes around the donor.
Chip Grizzard.
I would challenge the long-held argument for “unrestricted annual operating dollars,” particularly when it comes to community-based nonprofits. If I had a dollar for every time I have heard “I only give to program, not to salaries (or operating),” I could easily be somewhere in the Bahamas on my yacht right now.
It’s not a donor issue, it’s an organization issue – with reference to the comment about silos, a silo’ing of the messages we send (or don’t send) to our supporters about what is important. I would like to see nonprofits everywhere “adjust the conversation” with donors, board members, staff, even consultants, and work on the idea that without a strong organization, there is no mission or vision.
I would like fundraisers to challenge the notion that donors don’t remember how many times they’ve donated, how much they’ve donated, what they’ve donated to support, as well as the notion that donors don’t want to hear, or are incapable of understanding the difference between a 501-c-3 or 501-c-4 etc. Folks, we’ve been educating donors about tactics, strategy, and the distinctions between prospecting, renewals, and appeals for as long as the oldest person employed in the industry has been working.
Our donor’s aren’t stupid. They live in a marketing world. So market to them and serve them.
It’s a form of disrespect and disregard for donors who email or call with issues they’re having NOT to explain what is happening. And to thank them for the opportunity to make things better. Sure, some won’t want to listen. But a lot will thank you for your extra time. I propose that the bigger your organization is, the more you should be thinking every bit about the back-end as the front end. And that is where breaking down silos is very important (to relate this to earlier comments.)
And once your organization is actually listening to what your donors are saying to you, put in place the technical features that will allow you to fix the problem the donor is talking about. Once you’ve gotten a live person talking to a donor, its even more disrepectful not to spend some time addressing or fixing the problem the donor called about. Or “controlling the conversation.” Instead of “controlling” think of “positively closing.” If you want to differentiate yourself from the other nonprofit organizations your donors contribute to,, take a look at your back-end processes. Spend some money fixing them. Yes, it’s infrastructure. No, it’s not as exciting as thinking about your next creative project or what the numbers are telling you about the latest market trend. It’s not even about Personalization — if I get one more email where my first name is in all caps all through the email ….. — you get the picture. It’s about service and being willing to figure out what that means and invest in it.
And by the way, if you have a GREAT member services person who is acting as your secretary or receptionist or whatever AND doing database maintenance and answering member questions civilly and politely and has been doing that year in and year out — RECOGNIZE THAT PERSON every bit as much as you would recognize the person who just discovered the break-through technique or package that is lifting response. If we’re serious about retention, think about what you are doing for member services and the peopel who do that thankless job day in and day out.
I came here from Pamela Grow’s enewsletter. And I’m so happy that I did! It’s amazing what you don’t know about a game that you’ve been playing all your life, reminds me of a Taoist principle, We build our lives around what we know, but our lives are supported by how much we don’t know.
Peace,
Mazarine