“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”

I always attributed that line to Mark Twain. The internet is less sure, which is fitting since I would have bet the house on Twain in the Jeopardy category of “Quotes Everyone Misattributes With Great Confidence.”

But the line matters less for who said it than what it says; certainty is often more dangerous than ignorance.

Fundraising has a lot it knows for sure.

We know more appeals mean more chances to give. We know higher RFM means higher potential. We know premiums work because they lift response. We know the match works because the match always works, except when it works less, costs more, trains donors badly and is akin to a mattress store sale.

Some of these truths are partly true, which is what makes them dangerous. A half-truth with a spreadsheet attached feels bullet proof.

The other problem is mistaking the thimble for the ocean.

Most fundraising data is a tiny observable slice of donor behavior: who gave, when they gave, how much they gave, through which channel and to which offer. Useful but thin gruel.

That is the thimble problem, seeing a little and behaving as if we see everything.  The Twain problem compounds, as the little we see hardens into doctrine.

The sector stats are sobering and suggestive of thimble certainty that has run its course. I call it the Volume Trap, where we scale the easiest things to count and certify that it works with measurement that is a laser pointer pretending to be a lighthouse.

And when the returns soften, the usual answer is not to question the model but rather, to feed it.

Thomas Kuhn, the philosopher of science, argued that fields do not usually advance by calmly stacking facts on top of facts. They operate inside a dominant paradigm until enough anomalies pile up that the old framework can no longer explain what is happening.

At first, the anomalies get explained away. It’s the economy, it’s attribution, it’s the mail, it’s internet bots, it’s younger donors, it’s older donors…   These let us keep doing the same thing, only louder and with more software.

But eventually the rationales become louder than the evidence.

The mistake is thinking the answer is a modest optimization of the old paradigm. Subtract three appeals. Add SMS. Rename the annual fund a community. Call the same volume sequence a journey.

The deeper issue is that the dominant fundraising model starts with the ask add treats repeat exposure to the solicitation as best way to reach the right person, at the right time, with the right offer.

A new model is the only way out and that is the argument in The Volume Trap.  You cannot increase efficiency or effectiveness inside a broken model.

The hardest part is not learning something new, it’s giving up what the sector knows for sure.  We scaled the visible part of fundraising and confused it for the whole thing.  The way out starts by admitting the old certainty has gotten expensive.

Kevin