Fundraising From Yourself

Furthermore, you see all the materials you produce. That can give you the sensation that your messages are numbingly repetitive. This causes many fundraisers to frequently and confusingly vary their messages.

But here's the wild part: Conscious opinions about fundraising are automatically wrong. Even your donors, the ones who make the actual giving decisions, have no clue what's good. Really. If you've ever observed donor focus groups where they are shown direct mail to react to — everyone hates the stuff that works best. It happens every time. They say they'd never respond to the pieces that they most often respond to. They aren't lying. They're giving you an honest accounting of their conscious beliefs. It's just that their opinions and their actions don't line up.