Defining donors by channel is a bit like defining me by whether Amazon, USPS, UPS or FedEx delivers my packages.

It’s accurate, objective and almost entirely inconsequential to what I bought or why.

Calling someone an online donor makes the same mistake.

The donor may have seen a piece of mail, passed a billboard, heard a friend talk about the cause, watched a video or encountered the organization half a dozen other ways. They happened to complete the transaction online, so the database labels them “digital.”

The final click gets the credit and everything that created the reason to click disappears.

Channel describes where the transaction happened but usually tells us very little about why the gift happened, why it did not happen or what matters to the donor.

And saying people who give through multiple channels are better donors is akin to saying people who give us more are worth more. It is tautological, not insightful.

Death to channels.

Except channels still matter, just not as a theory of the donor.

They matter because fundraising requires reach and repetition. Reach is the number of people exposed, frequency is the number of times we expose them.

Some repetition is necessary (and unavoidable). Too much repetition creates diminishing returns, then irritation, tuning out and avoidance. The sector keeps testing the outer limit with sending more to solve weaker response and shrinking lists, which is a bit like treating a hangover with another whiskey.

The “if we don’t ask, they can’t give” thinking remains technically true in the same way that you can’t win the lottery if you don’t play, where your expected return if you do play is negative.  The cost side matters and there is always a cost.

This is where channels become useful again.

Different channels often create different modalities. The same proposition can arrive as spoken language, written copy, video, imagery, a short prompt or a longer appeal. That variation can make repeated exposure feel less redundant because the brain is not processing an identical stimulus each time.

The ask hasn’t changed but the presentation variety has and that helps mitigate the cost –  irritation, tune out.

This helps explain why several coordinated channels can outperform hammering away in one. The benefit comes from gaining reach and repetition without making every exposure feel like the same person ringing the doorbell again.

There is still a limit since variation delays fatigue; it doesn’t repeal it. At some point, another channel is simply another exposure, and the law of diminishing returns remains undefeated.

Long live channels.

As delivery mechanisms, not donor definitions.

Kevin