Last week, experienced (35 years in the biz) fundraiser and fundraising consultant Pamela Barden wrote a post in Fundraising Success titled, 4 Fundraising Questions I Can’t Answer.

A very intriguing title.

I bit.

Here are her four questions:

1. Can digital income continue to grow on similar trajectories as it has been growing?

2. Will all the “involved” supporters become financial supporters in time to help scrappy nonprofits gain a solid financial base?

3. In today’s environment, how can nonprofit organisations build for the future?

4. How much time is expended (wasted) gathering information that isn’t being acted on?

You’ll need to read Pamela’s post for her musings on these questions.

But just to entice you further, consultants and agencies will certainly resonate with her comments on the last one:

“I recently heard about one nonprofit that is seriously researching 30+ firms to deliver a possible service. Other fundraisers invest their time (and vendors’ time) in exploring options that they know they will never really do — all in the name of due diligence.”

Here’s Roger’s rant on that subject — The Dangers of RFPs!!

I have two questions to add to the list:

One is a variation of Pamela’s first: Yes, digital income will continue to grow exponentially (it’s all about consumers adopting technology, not some shift in fundamental human nature), but the question remains: How much of that ‘growth’ is simply channel-shifting? Or are nonprofits using the power and immediacy of digital presentation to pull ‘new’ money from old donors, or tap into genuinely ‘new’ donors?

And my second question: What do we really know about the giving decision as it’s actually made in the individual donor’s mind? A marketer of cars or bourbon or mortgages can dissect the consumer’s purchase-making process in excruciating detail and improve their chance of closure at every step of the way. Can we fundraisers do anything like that?

A reader asked us the other day whether we held to the convention that the effectiveness of any appeal was based upon 60% right prospect (e.g., list), 20% the offer, 20% the creative.

My convention would be: 98% the right prospect OR 98% the right timing! All the rest is marginally helpful. I’ll explain my theory in some posts to come.

Meantime, do you have any especially haunting fundraising questions you’d like The Agitator to address? We guarantee an answer. We’re sometimes wrong, but never in doubt.

Tom