It never fails. Every few years some bright-eyed consultant with a PowerPoint addiction announces they’ve cracked the code on donors.

Not by, say, asking donors what they care about. Not by measuring what they actually do. No, no—by asking if they’ve ever used a rotary phone, or sent a postcard, or listened to music on a Walkman. One point for each thing you’ve never done, and voila—your donor identity, distilled to a BuzzFeed quiz.

Imagine betting your annual revenue on whether Mrs. Callahan in Des Moines once rented a VHS tape from Blockbuster. Yet this is what passes for “insight” in too many conference ballrooms.

The Snake Oil Checklist

This sampling of a generational  “test” is a perfect example. A Frankenstein mix of nostalgia and irrelevance:

• Have you ever recorded music from the radio onto a cassette?
• Used a paper map to get somewhere?
• Owned an encyclopedia?

And fundraisers are supposed to build strategy on this? That’s not science—it’s astrology with better fonts. Asking people what they think of themselves and then parroting their answers back is not sociology; it’s ego karaoke.

Generational Marketing, a.k.a. Lazy Thinking

Kevin’s already torn apart generational marketing in Gen Z to Save The Day —the idea that birth year explains behavior. Spoiler: it doesn’t. The differences between any two “generations” are dwarfed by the differences within one.

Treating Gen Z or Boomers or any generation as a hive mind is as useful as consulting horoscopes before sending your year-end appeal.

But snake oil sells, and lazy thinking has great profit margins. And, afterall, it’s far easier to stereotype a generation than to understand context, environment, and personality.

Enter the Trolls

And on the other end, we’ve got the trolls—those self-anointed experts with a thimble of knowledge they mistake for an ocean—sniffing at AI as plain tofu or white bread without the crusts. These are the same people who once thought email was a fad and that no one would ever get engaged or become better informed let alone give money online.

Here’s the irony: dismissing AI’s practical uses in fundraising (personalized asks, real-time testing, frictionless giving) is just as bad as selling snake oil personality charts. Both deny evidence and both leave fundraisers stuck chasing shadows.

The Real Medicine

Fundraising isn’t about whether your donor once dialed into AOL or still owns a paper map. It’s about:

• Gratitude: Sending thank-you notes.
• Substance: Offering a bigger meal, not a Big Mac. Real stories, real data, not cotton candy.
• Connection: Socialization, belonging, friendly greetings that sound human.
• Context: Personality, identity, environment—what actually shapes behavior.

Ignore that, and you’re as reckless as the wellness guru selling $89 detox water.

So beware the fundraising snake oil peddlers—on both sides. The ones promising cosmic insight from a checklist of stereotype demographic traits. And the ones too stubborn to see that AI can be grandma’s french onion soup instead of low sodium broth.

Because in this trade, betting your fundraising strategy on astrology by birthdate isn’t just hubris—it’s malpractice.

And as for bringing in RFK Jr. for his opinion on AI? Only if we’re diagnosing the measles outbreak in your donor file.

Roger