three - The science of fundraising

Summary

A 2008 New York Times article asked whether fundraising was due a ‘Moneyball moment’, referring to the book (later made into a film starring the actor Brad Pitt) about an underdog baseball team that triumphed by being the first to rely entirely on sophisticated data analytics and pay no heed to conventional wisdom when buying players and selecting teams. The question arose because the author of the article, David Leonhardt, believes that charity fundraising appeals are largely based on ‘common sense’, ‘intuition’, and ‘nothing more than a few rules of thumb’, and quotes a series of economists who believe there is little science or empirical evidence to support the strategies employed by most fundraisers (Leonhardt, 2008, np).

The successful fundraisers interviewed for this study might well agree with Leonhardt's analysis while disagreeing with his conclusion, because they see knowledge and evidence as necessary but not sufficient, as this interviewee explains:

I encounter quite a lot of people working in fundraising who are capable and have the technical skills but fall down because they don't get the political and contextual issues right. They don't read the weather right, they miss signals. I worry that we have sometimes encouraged people to think that if they go on enough courses then they’ll become a good fundraiser. But what's most important are things you learn on the job not in the classroom: an ability to deal with complexity, to tolerate uncertainty, to see things through a donor's point of view, a kind of doggedness. And the finest fundraisers I know have a kind of boldness, have courage. I believe everyone can learn and get better at these things, but I do think there are some people who have the aptitude, have the focus at the beginning of the journey and consequently have a head-start. (Female, A, B)

All interviewees had enjoyed significant fundraising success, yet some readily admitted they had no standard practice, did not adhere to accepted techniques, had never read a book about fundraising or been on a training course. One made an analogy with other jobs that rely to some extent on innate ability: “You could deconstruct, you know, the technical ability of a premiership football player but it doesn't mean to say you could get on the pitch and play like them” (Male, A, B).