“The danger of computers becoming like humans is not as great as the danger of humans becoming like computers.” – Konrad Zuse, builder of the first programmable computer

Fans of Star Trek: The Next Generation will recognize the order “Tea. Earl Grey. Hot.” as the standard drink order of the most British Frenchman ever*, Captain Jean-Luc Picard.  In this late 24^th century world, the ship had trained its captain how to order instead of vice versa.  He never said “give me a hot Earl Grey tea”; the computer only processes in category, subcategory, subsubcategory order.  He never said “Tea. Earl Grey.” assuming the machine would know he wanted hot Earl Grey (because iced Earl Grey is an abomination without a bunch of sweetener IMHO).  Nor did he say “make me my drink” – the system cared not for preferences.

In short, in his world as in ours, humans felt the machines were an annoyance to be accommodated.  And the machines felt the humans were the annoyance.  We are messy, we humans.  We are the grit in the machine, not sticking to protocol, not phrasing things as we “should.”

So too is it as donors and other lesser humans interact with our systems.  We are the problem to them; if we are inflexible, they are the problem to us.

They want to send honor or memorial donations notifications to multiple people.  Or from multiple people.  Or they want to print them out and send them themselves.  Or they don’t want an acknowledgment at all (said one donor: “why would I want to send [the person being memorialized] a card?  He’s dead!”).  Our systems can’t cope with donor preferences –or don’t want to.

We send appeals to them for the reason we think they should want to donate.  They have their own life experience and their own donor-identity-based-reason for giving.  If we too often ignore their reason for giving, they will no longer have one.

They have a great chat with our canvasser and donate.  Our canvasser wants to streamline the donation process so none of that conversation is captured.  So our system treats them like they are donor #24601 when there are things we know or should have known.

We optimize our emails to go out when the most people will act, as well we should.  They are working third-shift at the hospital, police station, or factory.  Their circadian rhythm comes from a different drummer: what is convenient for most is inconvenient for them.  They’ll gradually fall into the nonresponders, further reinforcing that that original time is the time to send.

They donate to a donor-advised fund or through an intermediary like Google or Facebook.  We state, correctly, that they didn’t donate to us – we have no record of their donation.  They state, correctly, that that’s irrelevant – we got their money and should have the relationship, receipt, and responsibility.

We, and the effective altruism movement, would love it if donors would pick their one most effective charity and shower it with money.  But no, in reality, they are promiscuously charitable, desiring impact on several issues that touch their lives.

In all these situations, we and they are each other’s grit in the machine.  We could run our donation systems so perfectly, so uniformly if only it weren’t for all these donors.

I don’t have the same worry as Konrad Zuse.  I don’t believe we malfunctioning meat robots will assimilate fully to the machines.  To be messy is to be human.  Likewise, our donors won’t give up their individual desires and wants to donate how and why we wish they should (and they shouldn’t).  And we too are human – even if we pulled 169-hour weeks, we can’t forecast every need and want and desire.

The question is where in the middle do we meet and where in the world do we begin.  At the risk of coming down on the machine’s side, this is something data can tell us.  With data and active listening, we can discover what are the sand particles in our gears and which are the rocks.  Even without these data, however, we can start with a commitment to start – that today we will do one thing to make life easier for our donors.  Today, we will stop being their problem and we will stop treating them as ours.

Nick

* Not to be confused with Hercules Poirot, the most British Belgian ever.