If you’re a nonprofit leader, you probably say this every time you hire an agency or think about hiring one:

“We need strategy. We’re tired of the same old playbook.”

• You want different answers to the same old questions.
• You want a partner with a point of view.
• One that doesn’t just build campaigns but helps you build a way of working.

But strategy feels amorphous.  It’s one of those words we slap on damn near everything.  Digital strategy anyone?  But, like the Supreme Court famously said about pornography, you usually know it when you see it.

Here’s a simple signal:

If an agency doesn’t have a strategy of their own, they’ll likely never build one for you.

What Strategy Actually Is

It’s not a budget, a deck, or a checklist.  Strategy is:

• A clear choice about how you will grow.

• A commitment to what you won’t do.

• A guiding policy that makes every decision easier.

Herb Kelleher said it best:

“We’re THE low-fare airline. If it doesn’t help us be that, we’re not doing it.”  That’s why you never got your chicken Caesar salad on Southwest.

What Often Passes for Agency “Strategy” 

Example #1:

“We do everything—mail, digital, analytics.” Translation: We are a buffet, not a strategy.

Example #2:

“We leverage big data and machine learning.” Translation: We bought the same data and data warehouse as everyone else and made it into a slide.

Example #3:

“We’re donor centric.” Translation: We still segment by giving history but call it something fancier.

What Strategy Actually Looks Like

We’ll use ourselves as an example though we’re far from perfect and half our team has strong opinions on where the comma should go.  And if you ask around, you’ll hear we’re occasionally insufferable about behavioral science.

We are the behavioral science fundraising agency.

Everything flows from that.

This means we:

• Hire behavioral scientists.  Not just those who play one on a conference stage.

• Our client onboard includes mandatory primary research for donor insights.

• Spent time and money building a scalable product to match message to a person’s innate traits.

• Spent time and money building a model to match cadence to the person.

• Spent time and money building a product to measure donor experience continuously, not once a year.

• Insist on spending fundraising budget on brand ads.

And it means we don’t:

• Ask more to make more.

• Send one-size-fits-all creative.

• Throw big data in a blender and declare it insight.

• Mark up production or media just to feed the volume mindset.

How to Spot the Real Thing

Before you sign a contract, ask your agency:

• What is your agency strategy in one sentence?

• What do you deliberately choose not to do?

• How will what you do for us be different from what you do for everybody else? 

If they can’t answer quickly and concisely and convincingly, you have your answer.  More people on a Zoom call doesn’t make up for no theory of change.  The number of times they say AI or big data doesn’t correlate with insights. The volume of services doesn’t matter.

The clearest sign you’ve found an agency that’s worth hiring is that they’ve made a choice about who they are.

Kevin