Effective Fundraising

8Information Support

A READER OF a decade ago could pick up a copy of this book and find the subject matter of the previous chapters to be familiar. The mechanisms of the annual fund, capital campaign, planned giving and events have remained basically intact. Not so with information support, communications, and operational activities. The very fabric of those activities has been ripped apart and totally redefined by technology. Only the final mechanism of the donor ask either face-to-face, via ZOOM¹ or via telephone remains intact. Awareness raising, education, and brand building activities, however, have been transformed beyond recognition. The great challenge today is how to adapt these new technology vehicles to reach the new generation of younger donors, while not losing contact inadvertently with older donors. Of course, some new technologies like ZOOM are so simple they have even achieved remarkable penetration with the older generation. I recently observed a ZOOM-enabled 65th high school reunion of 20 people all over 80 years old. It was a lively, highly interactive, and spontaneous discussion, which vividly showed how the combination of high-speed bandwidth and cheap high-resolution digital graphics have changed the world of communications for all age cohorts (the session also facilitated three alumni gifts, each a $100,000 charitable annuity).

In short, the information revolution has totally transformed both the process of donor identification and the subsequent building ...