Do underdogs have it easier?
Welcome to this week's LinkedIn-only excerpt of the Donor Participation Project newsletter! The Donor Participation Project is a community of 6,000+ fundraisers where you can network, learn, and advance your career.
Are you overwhelmed by emails, pings, and other random requests for your attention? So were we.?
And we built a little software tool to help tame the beast.?
If it's an urgent message ("urgent" for us means it is from an Annual Fund Toolkit client and requires some action on our part), we get pinged on Slack. If it's not urgent, then it gets put in a queue for a daily digest that we get at 6am every morning.
So, what does this mean for fundraisers?
It means that our donors are going to have increasingly sophisticated gate-keeping tools to make sure that they're only getting messages that interest them.
Mark Dobosz wrote about it beautifully in a LinkedIn comment (bolded texts are mine): "Well it will push us to again think about focusing on those who we have relationships with to continue facilitating their philanthropy rather than spending inordinate amounts of time and energy in transactional fundraising trying to “convince” people why they should support our organization. The goal should be to build as many real relationships as possible with supporters so that the donors interests are aligning with your mission in a deep way leaving AI with no other option to see the alignment in the algorithm. True and authentic relationships are recognized and should be the value proposition in all our interactions."
Honestly, I don't see another sustainable way to do it.
What do you think? Reply here and let me know. Would love to know your thoughts.
Thanks in advance,
Louis
PS: If you missed last week's session, you can review all our recordings at joindpp.org/resource-library
Lunch Analysis
Meet John Templeman , the Director of Annual Giving at Cleveland State University, who will share his journey rebuilding and growing an annual fund program at CSU.
Renowned for his competence and creativity, John Templeman is a valuable resource for fundraising professionals and remains a go-to expert for annual fund strategies.
John has been actively involved with the Annual Giving Network since 2015. He holds a Master of Nonprofit Organizations (M.N.O.) from Case Western Reserve University and a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration (B.S.B.A.) in Marketing from Bowling Green State University. Additionally, he is the President and CEO of Jib Machine Records, demonstrating his versatility and varied interests.
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Have a great week,
Louis