Building on Drayton Bird’s blog, Five shocking lessons from a lifetime in marketing, Jeff Brooks added some fundraising spin of his own with 5 things you wish you already knew.

Jeff inspired me to think more specifically about basic marketing mistakes fundraisers make.

Here is my first pass at a list of ‘Top Fundraising Fallacies’ …

1. ‘Best practice’ is good enough.

Not true. Sometimes what is commonly perceived as ‘best practice’ is simply not supported by the facts. Even if a ‘best practice’ seems sound, that’s no excuse for not trying to innovate and improve. But I’m being too kind. Read this rant from our DonorVoice colleague Kevin Schulman — Top 12 Reasons Why Fundraising Best Practices Suck.

2. It works for them.

This is slightly different, but, like #1, has deep roots in sheer laziness. Listen, I’m all for watching your competition, discerning what works especially well for them, and then adapting that — not copying it — to your circumstances. You can’t simply embrace what looks to working for others; you must test it for yourself.

3. One gift makes a donor.

I’ve come to the belief that the first gift you get from a donor is simply that … a pure gift from someone momentarily attentive. A donor is a committed giver who makes multiple contributions. If you look at your new ‘gifters’ that way, you might get much more serious about retention … and raise more money.

4. There are plenty more donors where those came from.

Oh yeah? Then why are new acquisitions steadily trending down? According to Target Analytics, new donor acquisition declined a median 3.2% from 2012 to 2013. How can the nonprofit sector steadily breed more new nonprofits like rabbits, recognize that giving is stagnant (as a percentage of GDP), and still think there are plenty of new donors just around the corner? The moral here is retention is the new acquisition.

5. It’s OK, our online fundraising is up.

Prove to me that your online giving isn’t simply channel shifting by existing donors — same pie, with different size slices. Only then will I take some comfort in celebrating your online fundraising stats.

Anyway, as I said at the top, this is just a first pass at ‘Top Fundraising Fallacies’.

I’ll be adding to the list … feel free to help me.

Tom