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{Tactic} Is Dead; Long Live {Tactic}




We love to declare things dead in fundraising.


We've been sounding the death knell of Direct Mail for 30+ years that I know of.


Direct mail is dead. Email is dead. Phone calls are dead. Giving Tuesday is dead. Galas are dead. Facebook ads are dead. (Until next year, when they aren’t.)


It’s almost a rite of passage: pick a tactic, throw some dirt on it, and declare the profession reborn. We hold a little funeral, make a post on LinkedIn, and call ourselves visionaries. (Cue the TED Talk music and dramatic lighting.)


I admit, I’ve rolled my eyes at this trend more than once—usually while clutching a tote bag from a conference declaring that last year’s tactic is suddenly revolutionary again.


I digress.


Tactics don’t die. They get hollowed out. They get divorced from their purpose. They stop connecting.


The real danger isn’t the death of a tactic. It’s the erosion of its meaning.


This is not an obituary. It’s a warning.


Fundraising isn’t a series of steps. It’s a relationship. And relationships don’t scale on autopilot.



Tactics Become Dangerous When They Replace Meaning


Direct mail works. Email works. Events work. Face-to-face solicitation works. AI-driven segmentation works. Every tactic can work.


What doesn’t work is turning fundraising into a transaction machine.


When we reduce fundraising to formulas—segment, target, ask, repeat—we lose sight of the reason we do this work. When we fixate on performance metrics at the expense of human connection, we turn generosity into a product.


That’s not strategy. That’s sales automation with a tax-deductible receipt.


The tactic isn’t the problem. The loss of purpose is. We end up confusing repeatability with wisdom. Volume with value. Urgency with meaning. And before long, our campaigns look slick, sound right, and fall flat.



The Problem of Legacy and Exclusion


Every fundraising tactic carries the fingerprints of its origin. Direct mail rose to prominence alongside 1950s mass marketing. It succeeded because it could reach and influence suburban housewives—the original target demographic. To this day, the "average donor" profile in many databases reflects this legacy: older, female, suburban, white.


But that didn’t just happen. It was designed.


Digital fundraising risks repeating the same exclusionary pattern. We celebrate our digital savviness while ignoring the digital divide. Reliable broadband, tech literacy, and platform access still follow patterns of race, age, geography, and income.


Major gifts programs do it too. By definition, they privilege wealth. But wealth is not evenly distributed. So neither is the attention of our fundraising teams.


Recurring giving, too, can become exclusionary. At its best, it's a convenient, generous commitment. But too often it becomes a "set it and forget it" strategy—a tool for generating ongoing revenue at lower cost that unintentionally sidelines engagement.


When used this way, it privileges ease and automation over genuine inclusion, failing to invite donors of all levels into the daily mission of the work.


When we use tools without interrogating the power structures beneath them, we replicate the very inequities philanthropy claims to address.


We can’t build an inclusive future with methods built for exclusion.


This, though, begs the questions and we are not fully aligned on this as a sector or as a profession. This statement assumes we all want and are working towards an inclusive future. Do we? Are we?


We're wringing our hands over plummeting retention rates and declining numbers of households giving to charities while donors - aka people - are running in droves to crowdsourced fundraising, mutual aid, giving circles and, yes, DAFs. While simultaneously telling us "I get more value giving directly to someone/thing than I do through a nonprofit." I've said it before, I'll say it 1,000 times again: generosity - giving - is like the Whos down in Whoville having their Christmas without roast beast or gifts or trees or any of the trappings of the holiday. Giving is a natural, inherent part of being human and people are going to give whether we fundraise them or not.



Generosity is already inclusive. The question is, will fundraising be?



All Tactics Are at Risk of Transactionalism


Even the most "relational" fundraising can become mechanical.


Major gift work, face-to-face meetings, portfolio management—these are supposed to be high-touch, values-driven, deeply human forms of engagement. But even here, the pressure to perform can flatten the connection.


Moves management becomes a checklist.


"Meaningful contact" becomes a CRM field.


The calendar drives the ask, not the conversation.


And suddenly, a donor isn’t a person anymore. They’re a line item. A metric. A prospect who needs to be qualified, rated, cultivated, and closed.


We turn relationships into pipelines and humans into probability scores. Even when we meet in person, we risk bringing our scripts instead of our curiosity.


The problem isn't the tool. It's how we use it.



What We Lose When We Mistake the Map for the Terrain


Tactics are maps. But the real work of fundraising happens on the terrain.


The terrain is unpredictable. It's emotional. It's slow. It's based on trust, timing, and identity. And no map—no matter how finely drawn—can substitute for the experience of walking it.


Invitation is not automation.


Community is not conversion.


Belonging is not branding.


When we confuse the map for the mission, we start believing that the journey is just another optimized click path. We stop listening. We stop learning. We start losing.



The Hard Work (and Deep Reward) of True Fundraising


Fundraising is sacred work. Not because of how much it raises, but because of what it invites people into.


It asks people to act on their values. To become part of something bigger than themselves. To see their identity reflected in a better future.


But that only happens when we treat fundraising as invitation, not extraction.


This is the hard work. And it doesn’t get easier with templates, toolkits, or TikToks. It gets better with reflection, intentionality, and a relentless commitment to honoring the humanity of our donors and ourselves.


We can use any tactic.


But we must question every tactic.


Who does it include?

Who does it exclude?

Who does it center?

Who does it ignore?


Because fundraising isn’t about the ask. It’s about the relationship that makes the ask - the invitation - possible.



So What Can You Actually Do?


It starts with stewardship—not just of gifts, but of data, relationships, and trust.


  • Keep your data clean, updated, and intentional. Bad data breaks trust before a word is spoken. Good data honors the person behind the record.\

  • Treat every touchpoint as a response to an invitation, not a reminder of a transaction. Whether it’s a newsletter, a thank-you note, or a birthday email—build connection, not obligation.

  • Build communications strategies that transcend the platform. A good message isn’t good because it’s on TikTok, or in an envelope, or delivered in person. It’s good because it meets the donor where they are, with honesty, relevance, and respect.


When you approach your work this way, tactics become flexible. Relationships become central. And fundraising becomes what it was always meant to be: an act of meaningful, mutual transformation.


{Tactic} is dead—when it becomes just another trick to extract dollars.

Long live {Tactic}—when it becomes a tool to connect, to invite, and to transform.


T. Clay Buck, CFRE is the founder and principal of Next River Fundraising Strategies, an individual giving consulting company that believes fundraising should be easier, more human, and deeply grounded in strategy, values, and the actual joy of generosity.

 
 
 

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