Internet fundraising has come a long way since credit card capability was The Big Thing. Come see how youԶe grown.

By Paul Barbagallo

In his book, The Haystack Syndrome, Eliyahu Goldratt asks whether an information system can answer the question (not project, but answer): “How much net profit will our company make next quarter?” His answer: Yes.

Might we expect the same from our fundraising systems? I suggest that we can, if we follow Goldratt’s methods. This means: the rigorous scheduling of gift “production” activities (scheduling backwards from the deadline, you define a series of “moves” to advance the gift); development of mechanisms to alert managers when gift-production activities start late (or fail to start at all); and scaling back or abandoning analytical efforts to spot trends or profile donors, and relying instead on the intuitive data possessed by our best fundraisers.