I want to extend my sympathy to David Love and Jen Love, two of my favorite Agitator-reading fundraisers over the passing of Dr. Henry Barnett, Jen’s grandfather and David’s father-in-law.

Normally, I would do this privately with a personal note and not a post.  But, the life of Henry “Barney” Barnett stands as a positive example for all fundraisers — not just David and Jen.

Let me explain.

Whenever I list the ‘Greatest Barriers to Growth’, I invariably name Poor Research and Undocumented Best Practices  among the top 10. Our craft relies far too lazily and with far too much acceptance on so-called ‘best practices’ with too little demand for empirical evidence of their efficacy.

Of course there are those who excuse or justify the ready acceptance of the status quo. “Yes, but fundraising is an art, not a science.” Such utter nonsense.

Medicine is both an art and a science. And physicians, nurses and hospitals have Standards of Care specifying appropriate treatment based on scientific evidence and the collaborative sharing of information between medical professionals involved in the treatment of a given condition.

A patient in California with a respiratory infection is likely to get the same course of antibiotic treatment as the patient in London with the same condition.

Chuck Longfield, Blackbaud’s Chief Scientist, has long preached the need for more research and documentation of best practices in our sector. A process by which the ‘best practices’ for procedures most organizations must perform — collection of monthly pledges, thank yous and acknowledgements, for example — are peer reviewed, documented and then made available to the sector.

But medical Standards of Care don’t exist simply because that’s the way medicine has always been practiced. They exist because thoughtful, courage physicians and scientists have been willing to challenge the status quo and prove ‘best practices’ wrong.

Enter Dr. Henry Barnett, Jen’s grandfather and David’s father-in-law.

In reading the obituary of Dr. Barnett it’s clear that tens of thousands owe their lives to this Ontario neurologist whose pioneering stroke-prevention research improved the health and longevity of folks around the world.

The so-called ‘Aspirin Study’ that Dr. Barnett led — along with another study that showed a commonly done stroke-prevention surgery to unclog a patient’s neck artery could be more risky than beneficial — proved to be the ground breakers in stroke research.

Of course the ‘best practices’ medical crowd was skeptical to put it kindly. So skeptical that when Dr. Barnett presented his findings to a conference of neurosurgeons, half the audience walked out!

Sound familiar? It should. All too often new ideas — even when backed by empirical research — get the cold shoulder from fellow fundraisers stuck in the ‘best practices’ rut.

So the next time you take that baby Aspirin recommended by your physician, or hear about a new approach to fundraising that challenges your conventional way of doing things, I hope you’ll give thanks for the life and courage of folks like Dr. Henry Barnett.

Roger

P.S.  For those readers who’ve had the pleasure of knowing or working with David or Jen Love, I think you’ll agree that iconoclastic and courageous legacy of Doctor Barnett lives on.