Jeff Brooks at Future Fundraising Now strikes a nerve — or maybe the funny bone — with his recent post, Fundraising starts with donors, which in turn links to an article by David Meerman Scott, titled Making stuff up.

C’mon, admit it! Anyone running a direct response fundraising program has committed the sin.

I’m not saying you (or your consultant) literally fabricated the story or accomplishment featured in your latest special appeal (although there are fraudsters in our biz who do that).

Here’s what Jeff means by ‘making it up’:

The reasons your donors give is not because of your awesome programs, first-rate staff, or superb mission. It’s not even because of your brand that you worked so hard to develop.

They give for reasons of their own that have almost nothing to do with any of those things.

When we gather in the conference rooms, we tend to come up with these great ideas that have nothing to do with donors. And then we talk ourselves into the greatness of our great ideas.

Now that’s what we’ve all been guilty of doing at one time or another.

Your consultant comes in and asks: “We need to get to work on the [fill in the month] special appeal … what have you got going on?” You look around the table at your staff, all with blank looks on their faces.

And then a process begins akin to shopping in a jewelry store.

We all know that very strong emotions motivate shopping at a jewelry store. It’s not a pop into Starbucks.

All the rings look the same, but you just can’t say: “Any one will do”.

To your intended recipient, there’s really only one ring in the entire collection that will please!

So, as we’re ‘jewelry shopping’ for a special appeal topic, they all look alike. The conversation goes …

“We can write about endangered species or climate change or fracking … they’re all good, who cares?”

“No wait, we wrote about fracking in the last appeal.”

“OK, let’s make it species … which one?”

“No insects … it’s got to have fur.”

Looking at the bright side, at least with “It’s got to have fur” someone has — in a very back-handed way — finally raised an issue that suggests they’ve superficially thought about what might be going on inside the donor. They’re reflecting upon prior experience suggesting that more people will empathize with and come to the rescue of the dolphin than the dragonfly. What about a honeybee?!

Seriously, the point here is that you can’t just pick any ‘ring’ in the case.

You must start with the donor, not with your assortment of programs.

As Jeff says: “Start instead with donors. Know what they respond to and create better and better versions of that.”

Tom