A Realistic Look at Annual Funds

As our technology advanced and our efficiency increased, and as we began to get much more from much less, our need for real time and for our donors’ attention span for this stuff shrank — continuously. We went from being able to capture a half hour of our donors’ time through the volunteers’ visits to 10 to 15 minutes through direct mail, to three to five minutes through the phonathon. And we are now struggling to capture a few seconds of time and attention from our constituents via flash video to inspire someone to click “reply” and key in a credit card number. The psychological real estate we capture through the new media is shrinking — rapidly.