# Don't  forgive forgetfullness

- Link: https://fundraising.co.uk/2009/02/18/don039t-forgive-forgetfullness/
- Published: 2009-02-18T12:40:26+00:00
- Author: Bryan Miller

 

**Once upon a time**, many years ago, a fresh-faced me sat at the feet of the direct
marketing greats and eagerly listened, learned and remembered.

 

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We – my charity colleagues and me, and our agency – applied what we learned and 
spread that learning amongst ourselves. And the knowledge proved accurate and powerful.
It did well, raised a great deal of money at good ROI.

 

 

 

Soon, many of us in the fundraising community had about the same amount of knowledge
and we applied it, getting better and better with practice.

 

 

 

This was a generation ago. Where did that learning **_go_**? I know it stayed inside
my head. I replayed it at conferences and with clients, but it was just last year
that I realised:

 

 

 *  Many fundraisers have forgotten  that powerful stuff that we all learned and
   knew once upon a time
 * There is no mechanism for preserving the best knowledge and passing it on to 
   the new generation
 * The sector suffers from amnesia, forgetfulness or is just plain distracted
 * It has forgotten some of the classic, timeless fundraising knowledge that makes
   things work at their best

 

 

Here are 4 examples, anonymised, from 2006-2009, of what happens when you forget
important, foundation knowledge:

 

 

 *  Junk e mail: the forgotten science of DM testing, laid down at least 40 years
   ago, resulting in untargeted, junk e mail campaigns ‘because it doesn’t cost 
   us any more money to e mail everyone so why bother with all that testing malarkey?’.
   Words fail me.
 * Using the donor’s data history comprehensively in communications: a top-drawer
   agency, founded a generation ago by DM greats, which obsesses over data analysis
   but forgets totally the potency of using highly personalised long-copy appeals
   with relevant data items inserted …leading to poor income results. Quelle surprise.
 * The unexpected keepers of the flame: the agency whose charity client has such
   a high turnover of fundraisers  that only the agency greybeards (and none of 
   them over 50) know the history of the charity’s marketing.
 * Still being asked the same questions: those of us still active with roots ten,
   twenty, thirty years ago sometimes reflect to each other that we are being asked
   the same questions now as when we began. Is nobody out there learning?

 

 

Years ago a Cambridge academic told me about ‘institutional memory’. It was, she
said, the term for the collective knowledge of an enterprise. It was a kind of invisible
but nonetheless potent asset that all organisations had.  It couldn’t be quantified
and never entered the balance sheet because accountants did not know how to measure
it. But it was definitely there. Generally, if a few special, experienced people
left, the knowledge went out of the door with them. Start all over again.

 

 

 

Since the late 90s academics and others have talked about knowledge management and
how valuable an asset knowledge is. It has become very big business, with an infrastructure
of consultancies, academics, internal knowledge management experts and authors. (
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_management](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_management))

 

 

 

Knowledge is captured, written up, made available in paper and via web channels.
Firms in the commercial sphere report substantial benefits from creating ‘communities
of interest’ who share knowledge in person for the benefit of the business. ROI 
data is scarce but growing, but tangible results of KM and with supporting data 
can be found for cost reduction, speed to market of new products and collaborative
problem solving.

 

 

 

The challenge to the not for profit  world is to preserve the valuable learning 
that charities naturally generate so that it is not lost – to their great detriment.

 

 

 

With the recession that is now with us, and for some long time, finding and rekindling
that classic, powerful knowledge seems rather important.

 

 

 

The 16th-17th C philosopher and thinker Sir Francis Bacon wrote that ‘Knowledge 
itself is power’ ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientia_potentia_est](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientia_potentia_est))
His world was not ours, but I think he was right.

 

 

 * **[WSPA Director of International Marketing to join UNHCR](https://fundraising.co.uk/2009/02/19/wspa-director-international-marketing-join-unhcr/)**(
   19 February 2009)
 * **[Amanda Ball to be Group Marketing Director at merged age charity](https://fundraising.co.uk/2009/02/20/amanda-ball-be-group-marketing-director-merged-age-charity/)**(
   20 February 2009)
 * **[Yours for the Asking: An Indispensable Guide to Fundraising and Management](https://fundraising.co.uk/2009/03/02/amazon-329/)**(
   2 March 2009)