Editor's Note: Listen Up!

Still … donors are human, and humans are prone to all kinds of wonderful and confounding unpredictability. I stand by my belief that fundraisers who don't look beyond "profiles" risk paralyzing their organizations' fundraising efforts. The sector is leaning increasingly toward personalized treatment of donors that acknowledges as much as possible their individual needs and, yes, quirks. Plus, with the rise of the Internet as a donor-cultivation tool and the aging of the donor base, more nonprofits are reaching out to younger donors who are well-intentioned but sporadic — and whose slowly emerging giving habits are difficult to predict.