Of the more than 1 million nonprofits in the U.S., nearly 75% post annual revenues below $500,000. This leaves little or no room for the ‘science’ part of fundraising, like data analytics and predictive modeling.

Organizations with higher revenue can afford the analytics and technology essential to fostering growth in today’s markets. But what about small nonprofits – the preponderance of groups in our sector?

Other sectors have faced similar dilemmas and challenges. Small farmers form cooperatives to give them scale and clout. Think “Lucky Leaf” brand pie filling from the small farm apple growers of Pennsylvania or “Blue Diamond” brand almonds from the groves in California … and on and on. The same with consumer buying cooperatives, labor unions, and cooperative workspaces.

All nonprofits, but particularly the smaller ones, need to get far better at cooperation and collaboration when it comes building scale in the use of technology, data and analytics.

There are many reasons why this isn’t happening. Some fear an imaginary “competitive disadvantage” will spring from information sharing and collaboration. Others can’t envision what it would look like. And still others are too short of staff and too pressed for time to get the ball rolling.

It shouldn’t be this way. Why in the world should organizations of like mission, or proximate geographic location, wastefully duplicate infrastructure, technology, and data applications, when one set of tools could be cooperatively employed by all?

Kind of reminds me of the old, old days when even small towns had multiple telephone companies, multiple electric utilities and competing fire departments.

It doesn’t have to be this way. An outstanding example is The Contributor Development Partnership, a cooperative that includes 100+ independent public broadcasting stations. CDP shares information … bulk purchases telemarketing for thank you’s … and a range of other data-related services.

Once again, as I did in Barriers to Growth — Part 7, I invoke the words of — actually a video featuring — Chuck Longfield, Blackbaud’s Chief Scientist and Founder of Target Analytics. I urge you to watch the brief talk Chuck recently gave at the Social Innovation Summit 2014.

There’s no question in my mind that the future growth and success of our sector depends on our ability to collaborate and cooperate on documenting best practices and on sharing and scaling up the best technologies and data analytics available.

What’s your experience with collaboration and cooperation?

Roger