Does following fundraising best practices help or hurt?

What's worse in fundraising: Doing what everyone is doing? Or following your own path?

The answer, of course, is it depends.

The downside of carefully following "best practices" is articulated by The Agitator, at Losing Donors In The Sea of Sameness. They call it herd behavior and "sloppy, copycat practices."

Which is frequently true. But not always. Some best practices really are best -- at least for now. A best practice can lose its power for a couple of reasons:

1. Over-use -- everyone does it, so it no longer gets attention.
   
2. It fails to keep up with changing donor behavior. (Especially true in the fast-changing digital world.)
   

And some "best practices" weren't really good in the first place. They're just something a lot of people do.

But if you take all that as a reason to ignore best practices, you'll waste a lot of money and time with pointless failures. Smart fundraisers should pay attention to best practices. And use them with open eyes.

The painful truth about ignoring best practices is that you're much more likely to fail than succeed when you do that. The potential upside is that when you succeed, you can really succeed.

I think the evidence is clear that our profession suffers more from ignoring best practices than we do from over-following them.

Let me give you an example, pulled at random from Uncle Maynard's Treasure Trove:

It's an appeal from a largish national (US) charity -- one that's big enough to know better. Here's how the letter starts:

As our 75th anniversary year nears its end, we shift our focus to what lies ahead, and how, as God's children, we can make our world a better place.

The message proceeds to proudly list several accomplishments -- not needs, but previous successes. Then it ends with this:

Armed with new knowledge about what we are achieving and how we are putting our faith into action around the world, I hope you will consider making a special donation to our 75th Anniversary Campaign. Your continued support can help us reach our $7.5 million goal by the end of 2016 and provide a perfect capstone to this monumental year!

That's the "ask." It's one page only. No PS. (The two yous in the final paragraph are the only use of that word in the letter.)

The mailing completely ignores around a dozen widely known and proven direct-mail best practices. Maybe this organization is proud that it's not following the herd. More likely they're just making it up as they go along, blissfully unaware that they're getting so much wrong.

If this letter followed a handful of best practices, it would raise a lot more money. Ignoring those practices -- whether they just don't know them or they're trying to be different -- is simply irresponsible.

So when someone tells you to stay away from best practices -- even if it's our very smart friends at The Agitator -- take that advice with a big grain of salt.

from Future Fundraising Now http://ift.tt/2hvl8M6