A lot of what I’ve learned about the “when” of fundraising I learned from selling funeral flowers.

Let me explain.

My father was a florist– a business that depends on event and emotion-driven buying impulse — funerals, weddings, Mother’s Day, birthdays and anniversaries – with most transactions completed over the telephone and by credit card.

But back then there were no credit cards. Thus my Dad instructed me that on the very day of the funeral I must mail the bill for the flowers to the customer. I remember feeling a bit queasy about the timing, until he explained that the bad pay rate increased rapidly with every passing week after the funeral. “Roger, you have to get ‘em while the grief is hot.”

It strikes me that up until now so much of the “when” in fundraising has been dictated more by the mechanical limitations than by proven possibilities. For example, test after test shows that the more prompt the follow-up to an initial gift the better the response for a second gift. And that’s just one example.

The fact is that in fundraising timing is important.

Yet, let’s admit it. The reality of execution in the fundraising world seldom matches the known desirable. We know a lot about “when” an action should take place, but settle for far too little when it comes to making it happen.

Too often we settle for the 1001 organizational or vendor-imposed delays in cashiering, data entry, printing, inserting, mailing, telemarketers’ schedules, setup fees for minimum runs, and on and on ad nauseum.

It’s time to wake up — and act — on the fact that we operate and compete in a world where real-time data, real-time analysis, and real-time follow-up is no longer an isolated exception.  If Target, Walmart, Amazon and hundreds of other consumer companies can build growing and lasting relationships with millions of consumers, why can’t we do it with those same consumers, many of whom also happen to be donors?

Of course, we can. Indeed the survival and growth of the independent sector depends on our capacity to understand and take advantage of the value and power of now.

One of the reasons we all rejoiced with huge expectations at the advent of the internet, the World Wide Web, and all the new media tools was because we thought that was easy, fast, cheap and bountiful.

Few understood that the real reason for celebration was that, for the first time in marketing, there was a channel and technologies that could deal with the elusive ingredient of “when”.  Marketers had long known how to target and deliver messages to folks likely to suffer headaches. They had the “Who” nailed down tight. What they couldn’t target was “when” someone would actually get a headache and seek relief.

The online channel took care of the elusive “when” factor, because now people would simply search and instantly find a variety of ways to deal with their headache, served up by marketers with the aid of a variety of tools like Google Adwords. And when the consumer reached out the marketer was right there to reach back with persuasive information and a way to take action.

What did the nonprofit market do? Set up websites … put them in the hands of webmasters divorced from communicators and fundraisers … subscribed to a CRM service to more easily send out emails, update web content, and capture online information. Of course, the difficult but essential task of integrating the main fundraising database — the one used for the vast majority of fundraising tasks — was ignored or put off to some distant day.

Today, 15 years later, the critical components of a contemporary fundraising program — real-time data, analytics, modeling and messaging — are forced into separate silos, ensuring that neither the “Who’ nor the “When” will meet when it matters most – Now!

Two weeks ago I had lunch with one of the most forward-looking,  innovative, results-oriented and truly multi-channel-oriented fundraisers alive. He lamented how he’s had to spend enormous amounts of staff time and money cobbling together the databases from his CRM with his off-line database, and still can’t get any real time data or analysis to take advantage of the power and value of now.

In this day and age, with reasonably priced data and technology, this frustrated fundraiser’s vision is right on the money. 

He wants to know now— not in three weeks — who’s taking an advocacy action, or making a gift, or seeking information;

He wants to know now –not three weeks from now –when his supporters are taking action, and what their potential is for doing more;

He wants to act now, based on real time data, predictive analyses and his tested and proven messaging strategies, to move at once with an appropriate response for each donor.

He knows that the power and value of now is much more than a dream.  It’s the only hope of awaking from the nightmare of slow, continuous and inexorable decline.

Roger