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Jan 18, 2019

Retiring the Term “Donor Engagement”

I woke up this morning with the need to cease using the term donor engagement. It needs to be laid to rest.

This is a serious personal drag because it now means I need to remove all those blogs we have written on the topic.

But nonetheless, I am retiring the word from my vocabulary. I think you should too. Here’s why:

  •  It’s a top down word.
    • You’d never here a donor say: “I’m going to engage with my favorite nonprofit organization today.” Donor engagement is an institutional term. And if we are truly to be donor-central, then we must retire the words and ways that don’t support that goal.
  • The term is a euphemism.
    • When development people say donor engagement they really mean is “let’s engage the donor with the hope that they give us more money.” Let’s be honest: donor engagement has become synonymous with donor cultivation.

Language is important. I believe donors want their nonprofits to sound like real people who are working in great movements to change the world for the better.

I think we need a new term, and it needs to be honest.

What do you think?

One More Gift from Sustainers

I think we’d all agree that sustainers are great. Having a group of donors that have committed to giving every month is like money in the bank. And, not surprisingly, a lot of organizations are careful to limit additional appeals to this group so not to alienate any...

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Early Returns

We are knee-deep in analyzing last fall’s results. While there is of course some variation in results by organization, the general narrative is that last fall wasn’t great . . . but it wasn’t awful either. It was just OK. What we are seeing is that overall revenue was...

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How Fundraising Will Evolve

In honor of International Data Week, I’m sharing how the future of fundraising will evolve. Many people are concerned about fundraising (I’m not btw). For nearly two decades, the “experts” have been predicting the death of direct mail fundraising. Eventually, the...

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