You awake and grab your rod and reel.  You will eat what fish you catch; if you do not catch you do not eat.

The fish awake.  They have two schools of thought*.  You have the Dory school with poor memories.  They think the western part of the water is a great place to get a tasty treat, despite the fact that many fish go missing there.  And you have the Ackbars, who believe the western part of the lake is a trap.

You go to the water.  You see most anglers on the west side of the lake; you follow them.  They are using similar bait; you follow them.  As you pull up your third fish, you congratulate yourself on your choices.  You will return here while the fish bite.  Soon new anglers will follow your lead.

All this fishing changes the waters.  The balance  shifts to the Ackbars, who are less likely to be hoisted skyward.  Few Dories remain; those who do are vied for viciously and expensively.

So it is with donor acquisition.  We fish from the same pool of donors.  That pool, as discussed Monday, shrinks dangerously.  We ape each other’s techniques, with mailing labels subbing for worms.  We get ever more efficient about how and where we fish, using models and the best lists to focus our efforts.  When we discover a place to get the best results – monthly donors, major donors, planned givers, etc. – we don’t share that.  We see what’s happened at the fishing hole – the fishers go there even as the fish don’t.

It is not sustainable.  If some of us take more from an ecosystem than we give to it, it’s a decline.  If all or most of us do, it’s an avalanche – a collapse.

There are certainly incentives to do the improper.  As we argued in our tragedy of the donor commons piece, there’s a place between what’s good for our organization and what’s good for our industry where our fundraising programs can live, where we get an additional gift at the expense of all gifts.  And as Ian McQuillian mentioned in the comments there and on an insightful post about the fundraising commons, management of a common pool of resources can help avert tragedy in donor or ecological commons.

This solves one problem.  Or rather, it could if proper execution were writ large.  It prevents damage and helps an area come back.

It doesn’t, however, help grow (nor it is intended to).  It doesn’t put new areas under its protection.  And as we saw on Monday, even if we can arrest the momentum of our descent, it will not stop us from falling, shedding about a quarter of our donors in the next decade.

There must be a commitment to not take more than is sustainable.  There must also be a commitment to replant and restock – a commitment to grow.  Each of us,  and all of us,  bear responsibility for the future of individual philanthropy giving.  We’ve been given these wonderful things called charities.  It’s up to us not to lose them.

Two weeks ago, when discussing this the need to bring new people into philanthropy , a wise Agitator reader (as all Agitator readers are) wrote us about this point.  The reader said bringing new people into philanthropy is critical, but asked if it was realistic at scale.

I’ll confess I don’t know.

Is it realistic to reduce our emissions or plant enough trees (2-3 trillion, I read recently) to stave off catastrophic climate change?  I don’t know.

In both cases, I have only a sense, and barely that, of what the world looks like if we don’t.  That alone makes it a worthwhile endeavor.

So let’s take the first step – finding out if we can bring new people into our organizations, then into philanthropy, in a way that helps our missions and our donor ecosystems.  Roger will talk about one such way Friday, with more forthcoming in the days ahead.

Nick

* Schools of thought?  For fish? Get it?  Ah well, most of these jokes are just here for me anyway.