Massive Incrementalism
Now, more than ever, our world cries out for “game changing” innovations and solutions. Big breakthroughs.
For fundraisers, the term “game changing” means some big, bold innovation that can carry us into the Promised Land of Greater Response and Larger Gifts.
For nonprofits and their donors, the term “game changing” should mean harnessing the vast potential of this sector and delivering results commensurate with that potential.
For example …
- In the U.S. during the Great Depression the rise of ‘organized fundraising’ and the birth of the capital campaign firms proved to be game changing at a time when help was desperately needed by colleges, universities, hospitals and human services groups.
- In the 1960s and ‘70s the use of mass media (direct mail, print, radio and TV) proved to be the breakthrough engine needed to attract the millions of small gift donors and legions of citizen advocates to drive the civil rights, women’s rights, environmental and government reform movements.
- In the mid to late 1990s and early in this century the birth and growth of the internet and new media spawned new breakthroughs in distributing and sharing information, in organizing political campaigns, and in connecting causes with their constituencies.
What surprises and puzzles me is that the vast array of game changing potential available to us –the easy availability of technology, the power of social platforms, the speed of information, the known commitment of millions of people to promote social good, and the ability to identify and even predicatively model their behavior in order to involve them to a greater extent than ever – has not produced breakthrough results.
Why?
Don’t blame the economy or the political climate. The Great Depression and the late 1960s and 1970s saw remarkable, game changing breakthroughs taking place in political and economic environments as equally difficult as today’s.
Rather, I suspect a good part of the reason lies in the business-as-usual, risk adverse nature prevalent in the contemporary nonprofit mentality. A mindset focused on protecting the institutional status quo … of defending one organization’s turf against another organization’s ambition … of making sweeping and noble pronouncements about societal good while quietly and narrowly advancing self-interest.
Unfortunately, this same mindset flows into today’s fundraising process — the slow and painstaking nudging forward of not-much-risk, not-much-gain — a phenomenon that a colleague of ours calls “Massive incrementalism.”
At a time when high risk with its potential of great breakthroughs is so urgently needed, too many in our craft remain bogged down in analysis-paralysis; endless debates over small gains dependent on the minuscule variations that come from different color envelopes or the quality of paper in an annual report; and enough claims and posturing to make even Napoleon cringe.
We need to be doing far more to tap the potential that’s out there, and doing far less of the same old, same old things.
“Massive incrementalism” is not something I want to be remembered for. How about you?
Roger
Roger,
I guess you are not a student of physics. Check out:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/80-20_rule
Pareto’s principle has always been around, it is a law of the universe. While technology is providing incredible opportunities it has not yet figured out how to make 80% of the idiots go away. There will always be the few that have the vision and courage to lead. The reality is that most are followers, it’s physics.
“I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can’t see from the center.” —Kurt Vonnegut
I don’t know, Roger. I see what you mean in some cases, but I also see a lot of creative partnerships and collaborations in our community (especially between those of us in small nonprofits). It is very exciting and makes working in development more satisfying.
Since we are meeting people all the time, we development-types tend to have a lot of knowledge about what is happening outside our own organizations. We are the perfect ones to suggest potential partnerships. One of the most exciting parts of my job is to bring our program manager to meet with another group and for all of us to take some time to find creative ways to work together…sometimes it is a way to use our resources better (maybe sharing something/someone), sometimes it is a way we can offer more services to our students without adding expenses (through that organization), sometimes it is a way to secure funding that we couldn’t get on our own (especially from funders who want partnerships or to effect a larger number of individuals in our community).
I will go out on a limb to claim that these partnerships and collaborations are the next “game changing” moves of nonprofits in my community. I will concede this may not be the case in other communities.
Thanks for getting me thinking!
-Kim
I have to believe that a portion of this goes part in parcel with our improved ability to measure risk against reward for everything and our ability to derive “appropriate” resource levels from those risk reward measures. The benefits and limitations flow downstream:
• Greater insight into what a failed effort might cost us – this leads us to look at every experiment a net gain or a net loss.
• More visible consequence to being wrong – this means less people want to be wrong.
• When you layout risk on a probability curve we are less likely to structure ourselves to take risks unless there is clear evidence that the risk is no risk at all – as such we take small steps because they are safe and prudent.
• Those exact measures allow us to reverse engineer how long anything takes to do – so we can staff everyone at capacity – so people have less time and resources to try out ideas even on a small scale.
We know that failures allow for experiments that have the potential to generate radical shifts, but we do not budget to fail because that is not a particularly effective use of our resources.
We are walking the well worn path a safe distance from Vonnegut’s edge because we now understand the risk of getting closer.
Perhaps this becomes a question of communication. Can we convincingly explain to our boards and constituents that we need to budget for failed experiments?
Roger, thank you for your post. Your point about organizations being risk-averse and defending their territories is well-taken. Thank you for reminding us that now is the time to try to “make lemonade out of lemons” as we begin to come out of economic turmoil, but look at 3-5 years before normalization. And to remember to “tell our donors about their lawn, not our grass seed.”
JAY, to your point: We’ve all heard of the Pareto principle. You sound discouraged. Technology in and of itself won’t “make 80% of the idiots go away.” It can’t. It’s the means to an end, and technology, with the exception of some Artificial Intelligence machines being developed, is non-sentient. Roger’s point was that the humans behind the technology need to take more than incremental risks. Think large — think budgets for 3 to 5 years out designed to allow for testing and investing in new ways of fundraising. Mobile phone/collaboration between arts groups and yours to stage plays about your mission/persuading a bank to bankroll social services/ reinventing point-of-purchase fundraising in some new way.
Think breaking down the internal silos that we fundraisers have been fighting about, but that very few organizations seem willing to break down. I’m not talking about between development and membership. I’m talking about between “program and administrative” and fundraisers. Everyone who works for a nonprofit should consider themselves advocates in the way that fundraisers and the best program people do.
Congratualtions to you KIM, for succeeding in breaking down the lines between programs and development and presumably membership within your own organization. And for then bringing them with you outside your organization to mix with others. That kind of cross-organizational synergy is really exciting — and historically has been rare. Although there are some notable exceptions — the Green Group of 16 environmental organizations comes to my mind. That cooperative political advocacy was fostered by a grant from the Turner Foundation.
Roger is talking about inspiration — what if this works?? and budgeting for testing, instead of “what if this fails?” And taking a leap of faith, as Jo Sullivan of CDR so memorably did when she was at ASPCA and, seeing that “only” 11% of ASPCA’s income came from monthly donors, decided she wanted to grow that sector. To take the risk and use whatever technologies she could — and succeeded. That’s what Roger’s post is about.
Thank you, Roger, for your experience and leadership. Kate