The sector says donors won't pay attention. Look who's actually distracted. Walk into any fundraising conference and you will hear the same complaint within the first hour: donors won't pay attention anymore. They don't read the appeal. They don't open the email. They don't sit through the impact report. The diagnosis is always the same — too much noise, too little attention span — and the patient is always the donor. We would like to propose that the diagnosis is correct and the patient is wr
In 1950, Alan Turing asked whether machines could think. That same year, the donation form settled into a shape it has never left. Seventy-six years later, one of those two things has changed beyond recognition. Two forms, seventy-six years apart Picture a newspaper page from 1950. In the corner sits a fundraising coupon: Help Us Build the New Children's Ward. Three preset amounts — $25, $50, $100. A dotted line, a pair of scissors printed in the margin, a mailing address. You clip it, write
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We recently sat down to chat with the Massachusetts Association of Community Development Corporations team about their work and how the Click & Pledge platform has been an important partner. We hope you enjoy these highlights from our conversation as much as we did! Handling Turnover My name is Molly Marshall, and I work for the Massachusetts Association of Community Development Corporations. We use our acronym MACDC. We support the 60+ certified community development corporations in Massach
Read moreMost nonprofits told to look for "PCI compliant" are asking the wrong question—PCI DSS and SOC 2 are distinct frameworks protecting different dimensions of donor data, and the gap between self-assessment and independent validation is enormous.
9 min readRead moreGoogle's search monopoly is fracturing as AI adoption accelerates faster than any technology in history. For nonprofits, the window to prepare for AI-mediated discovery is now—before it becomes pay-to-play.
6 min readRead moreWe analyzed 2.7 million transactions expecting demographics to predict giving. They don't. Behavior is 28,000 times more predictive—and the data is already in your CRM.
6 min readRead moreFirst-time donor retention sits at just 18%, but AI-powered dynamic anchoring can transform high-churn micro-donors into lifetime supporters without manual intervention.
6 min readRead moreWhy donors ignore crises isn't apathy—it's cognitive survival. The brain filters 99% of reality to keep us safe, and your appeal is competing against biology itself.
6 min readRead moreResearch shows negative emotions fade faster than positive ones. Learn how the Fading Affect Bias and Peak-End Rule can transform your donor communications from forgettable guilt trips into memorable connections.
5 min readRead moreSomeone walks into a Louis Vuitton store and buys a $2,400 handbag with a stolen credit card. The transaction goes through. The bag walks out the door. By the time the real cardholder notices the charge and disputes it, the bag is gone, resold, and untraceable. But here is the part of the story nobody tells: how did the fraudster know that card would work? They did not walk into Louis Vuitton and hope for the best. Think about it — imagine walking into that store with 50,000 credit c
15 min readRead moreTolstoy's insight reveals why thriving nonprofits share invisible systems while struggling ones suffer unique breakdowns. Five invariants separate sustainable fundraising from organizational chaos.
6 min readRead moreJeff Clune's AI research reveals why hand-coded fundraising strategies fail—and how "Darwin Complete" organizations can adapt to any landscape.
6 min readRead moreFeynman's parable of Mayan astronomers reveals why predictive accuracy without causal understanding leaves nonprofits vulnerable when contexts change.
5 min readRead moreHow nonprofit technology commits architectural sins—prioritizing visible features over invisible infrastructure—and why this makes donors abandon their generous impulse.
5 min readRead moreTwo scientific papers from physics and AI reveal why fundraising analytics are fundamentally broken—and why measuring attention, not revenue, predicts future success.
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