Fundraising: better than selling a bunch of unwanted stuff

Here's a trend that bodes well for fundraisers, uncovered by Harvard Business School Working Knowledge: The Next Marketing Challenge: Selling to 'Simplifiers.'

Simplifiers are people, mainly in middle age, who've come to see that they have more "stuff" than they need. They've even grown burdened and embarrassed by all their stuff. Which leads them to seek something other than more stuff:

They want to collect experiences, not possessions. And they give experiences rather than goods as gifts to friends and relatives.

This is good news, because charitable giving is, more than anything else, an experience. A good one.

Giving is a positive, enjoyable experience for your donors even if you do nothing but receive their gifts. But there's a lot you can do a lot to increase the power of that experience:

• Create more connection and specificity between the giver and the cause they're supporting.
• Be prompt, sincere, detailed, and interesting in your receipting.
• Report back to donors regularly on the impact of their giving. Really make your reporting back worth reading -- and sharing.
• Have unique and exciting fundraising offers -- things nobody else is doing. (The really hard part, unless this is already built into your organization.)

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