Economics has long been called the dismal science. Behavioral Economics was the rebellion, a corrective to the fantasy of rational actors making perfectly calculated choices in a frictionless world.

The rebels had a point. But they also have their own problems: namely, the replication crisis. Turns out their shiny new hammer sometimes just hits different nails with the same old force.

I run two behavioral science agencies so you’d think I’d be predisposed to BS (my wife and children say I am) and I am but behavioral science ≠ behavioral economics. The latter is a subset, psychology dressed in economics’ clothing. The former is broader, messier, more useful with more tools in the toolbox.

And while I’m no apologist for Econ 101, I’m also not here to toss it out. Three old-school economic ideas remain undefeated in fundraising and their relevance hit me again while reading a paper on, of all things, scientific publishing.

1. All Profits Go to Zero

This is your Econ 101 truism: if there’s profit somewhere, competitors rush in, margin dies and commoditization wins.

Sound familiar? It should. Try canvassing in mature European markets. Or direct mail in the U.S. Channels get crowded. Yields drop. Costs rise. Everyone chasing the same pie, shrinking their own slice.

Scientific publishing has the same disease. More journals, more submissions, more researchers all chasing prestige and tenure dollars. Volume is king, and margins are paper-thin.

2. Diminishing Returns Are Inevitable

“Marginal utility” is the jargon but you already know it. That sixth mailer doesn’t bring in the same ROI as the second. The 20th SMS doesn’t double your impact over the 10th.

In the publishing world, the push for more scientists and more output leads to… minimal progress. Quantity goes up, quality plateaus and the marginal increase to knowledge and innovation is minimal.

This isn’t just academic. It’s the core flaw of volume-based fundraising. The system trains us to value more asks instead of better asks.

3. Copying Is Safer Than Creating

This one isn’t in the textbooks, but it’s still econ at heart. The fastest, cheapest way to lower risk and boost short-term profit? Copy someone else.

You’ve seen it: the faux petitions, the surveys that aren’t, the F2F leave-behinds, the never-changing welcome pack, the nickel package, matching gift offers and anything you can stuff in an envelope. Everyone using the same tricks because they once “worked”.

Academic journals do it too. The fastest way to get published is to cite what’s already been cited. And so we get a firehose of sameness, dressed up in different fonts.

I’ll close by sharing the closing remarks in the paper analyzing scientific papers.  I’ve made the obvious replacements to see if folks agree with the striking similarities.

• The more-is-better, quantity metric-driven nature of today’s scientific (fundraising) enterprise may ironically retard fundamental progress in the largest scientific (fundraising) fields.
• Reducing quantity may be impossible. Proscribing the number of annual publications (solicitations), shuttering journals (redundant organizations) and reducing the number of scientists (fundraisers) are hard-to-swallow policy prescriptions.
• Still, some changes in how scholarship (fundraising best practice) is conducted, disseminated, consumed, and rewarded may help accelerate fundamental progress in  science (fundraising).
• Reward and promotion systems, especially at the most prestigious institutions (charities), that eschew quantity measures and value fewer, deeper, more novel contributions could reduce the deluge while inspiring more innovative work.

Kevin

P.S. This is your last chance to register for the free learning session on better, best practice to get away from answering “who do I send this appeal to?” and instead, “what do I send to this person?”.