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 of donor awareness of the organization's needs. Several forces have collided which, in the process of allowing the building of some of the most valuable publically traded companies in the world, have also transformed development activities of organizations of all sizes (see Exhibit 8.1 for the eight most valuable publically traded companies in 2020, of which seven are technology companies with all but one of these being information services providers).

How did this happen?

First, the transformation has been driven by the explosion of the availability of very high-speed, very cheap, optical fiber cable and wireless (produced by Cisco and the Chinese manufacturer Huawei, among others). High-resolution digital video content is now delivered almost costlessly to PCs, tablets, and handheld devices for presentation purposes via this new channel. It turns out that today's interactive video conversations are now as easy to initiate and conduct at a lower cost than the long-distance audio telephone conversations of a generation ago. The second component of the transformation is the chip-enabled revolution. Intel (the leading US chip manufacturer, which had a $247 billion market cap as of July 1, 2020) created chips that enabled the emergence of inexpensive, computationally powerful, color graphic handheld devices like iPhones for end users (every development officer now has one). The final step in the transformation was in central offices and cloud farms (think Amazon). These are large-capacity data-processing devices with powerful social media software provided by Facebook, Instagram, Google, Twitter, Oracle, and so forth. The combination of those three items very rapidly resulted in development becoming a capital-intensive electronic-information-supported activity. In embracing these tools, development organizations have totally transformed their operational, prospecting, and other marketing activities.

The key elements of this transformation are described in more detail later. In aggregate, they represent a true revolution. Not that long ago, the tools used by the development department to communicate the organization's products and services that needed funding were primarily paper oriented. They were comprised of colorful annual reports, project brochures, nicely packaged individual stewardship reports, and so on. For capital campaigns, movies and videos were often prepared as well. Today, if these documents and films even exist, they are found only at the periphery, mostly for use by older people who still feel more comfortable with physical documents in their hands. The timing and ease of explaining the financial impact of different donation strategies to potential donors has been revolutionized. As will be discussed in Chapter 9, this impacts the micro social enterprise as much as the medium-sized or gigantic organization.

Website

At the center of today's electronically presented organization is the website. The website lays out in great detail an overview of the organization as well as descriptions of the organization's products and services. These websites normally include welcoming text or video comments by the CEO and the chair (pictures and video are used as well for these messages). The website contains an easily accessible potpourri of text, photography, and videos. In totality these items highlight the key aspects of the organization's operations, services, and the multiple ways donors can support it. The website is usually designed and installed by outside consultants and technicians, who are specialists in mobilizing the relevant technologies. Key aspects of a good website include the following:

• Having a modern up-to-date feel to it. As the world and the organization change, the website's content and format must also change to reflect both new priorities of the organization and the new technical capabilities of websites. All too often, the word tired is used to describe an existing website. Continual updates, plus every two years or so a complete reconceptualization, must take place. Technology evolves and industry standards for presentations rise continually. All this will be designed by teams, most of whose members are barely out of their teens.
• High-impact presentations and ease of navigation to key pieces of data are hallmarks of a successful website. Effective use of color, video, and graphics permeate every aspect of this endeavor. Fast response time and an intuitive menu are other critical aspects of a well-designed website.
• Ease of maintenance and updating of the website are critical. It must be easy for staff to plug in, on a continuous basis, updated schedules of events, meetings, and so forth. It is the central hub of the organization and provides the critical links and highways to users accessing its services.
• Passwords and other security measures are critical. Exposure to hacking is an ever present danger, and today's hackers are ever more sophisticated. You need to be easily accessible but also safe. Part of the website should be available to the world, other parts available only for insiders, and still other parts only for selected groups of insiders such as trustees, customers, and alumni relations people.
• Upgrades are often very painful and disruptive to users. Wherever I travel today, most often the organization's master website seems to be in the process of being upgraded, with major service interruptions and delays a matter of course.
• Rapidly expanding capability and access to ever-more-sophisticated information content. For example, some websites now carry drone flyovers of building and campus layouts. You can easily do 3D walking tours of building interiors, seeing lab layouts, and so forth. This, as described later, is all easily downloaded to a laptop or tablet for use in one-on-one potential donor presentations.
• Uptime is critical, with good practice now being over 99% availability.

The website is literally the front door to your organization. Consequently, it must be user friendly, informative, and have very fast response time. It goes without saying, of course, its content must be accurate and up to date. Customized versions are normally prepared for Facebook and other platforms. These websites must be synchronized whenever they are updated.

Communications

High-speed connectivity is the watchword of the twenty-first century. The standard of excellence has changed dramatically in this domain. In the post-Coronavirus Covid-19 world, the web-based software package ZOOM has become the overnight global de facto standard of excellence for donor solicitor meetings (other competitors are Cisco's Webex and Microsoft's Teams packages). In a very short period of time, this capability has driven the landline telephone into further obsolescence. ZOOM at the moment is the global standard with very high fidelity in picture, audio, and supporting materials. In the last month, uses of it by the author have included the following:

• Multiple online training sessions of 30–100 people with intense two- and three-way dialogue occurring.
• Committee meetings of 10–15 people with high interactivity

  and multiple documents being shared by the different participants.

• Attendance at lectures of 100 or more people with interactive questions at the end.
• Attendance at a half-dozen large graduation and convocation events, which would have been logistically complex to attend in person. Physical attendance, of course, would have violated completely any efforts to appropriately do social distancing.
• Receipt of a warm, personalized one-minute thank-you video from the CEO of an organization to which I had just made a personal gift. It was a high-impact and personalized message, and I found myself, after viewing it, wishing I had given more.

The ZOOM platform easily allows the sharing of multiple slide decks and videos. Afterwards, these items can be put into prospective donors' hands in either written or electronic form. A warning! As you enter the world of ZOOM communications, conferences that combine some people on video and others only on audio can lead to very misleading exchanges. For example, the people who saw the 1960 presidential debate between Kennedy and Nixon on TV came to a very different conclusion about the winner as opposed to those who heard it on radio. Substantial miscommunication can occur if part of the group has visual cues to go along with speech, while the other part of the group misses all the visual information. This can be critical if the subjects being covered are sensitive or emotional. As a result, some organizations now mandate that on their conferences, 100% of the participants must be either on video or else no video capability is allowed.

Looming out of this has been a significant disruption in workspace and the need for individuals to spend 40 hours in the office each week. The second and third quarters of 2020, ravaged by the Coronavirus Covid-19 pandemic, unmistakably showed that large amounts of work could be moved at no diminution of performance from the office to the home, not just on a temporary basis but also on a permanent basis. Some Google employees in California will spend more than a year working from home before returning to the office. The author watched a social enterprise board he is a member of recently triple the amount of time spent in face-to-face meetings. However, because the meetings were all done on ZOOM instead of in person, the commute time to and from a meeting, formerly an hour each way, dropped to zero. As a result, the board's use of the author's time was actually less than before with no discernible diminution of the quality or quantity of the discussion. Trustees are finding less in-person and more ZOOM meetings a much better use of their time. They can do more for the organization. Similarly, this also turns out to be true for a number of development officers. More time in video contact with potential donors and less time in planes and cars traveling to meet them. Occasional face-to-face contact is helpful, but not for every meeting.

Looking to the future, I anticipate substantial reductions in the need for physical offices because a high flow of ZOOM meetings will continue to replace physical meetings in a postpandemic world. For most people, it will not be an either all-home or all-office decision but rather carving one's time up between the two in appropriate and creative ways. Of course there will always be some sensitive items that are done better on a face-to-face basis.

The ubiquitousness of these examples is overwhelming. Routine interactive, no glitch, low cost, two-way video communications across multiple platforms is here for the nontechie. It operates in the middle space between telephone calls and in-person visits that can involve significant travel. It is a powerful way to make more high-impact calls on potential donors without the many hours of travel often involved. The released time of a trustee or a major gifts officer can be redeployed to either develop more prospects per person or more effectively deepen relationships with existing prospects. Spending hours in transit either in traffic jams or airport delays is sharply reduced (not good news for the transportation industry. Business travel is not going to be the same.).

Database Management

The new technologies allow orders-of-magnitude more information to be gathered, manipulated, and analyzed on both individuals and groups of individuals. For example, a multi-site museum's new software now tracks every member's and trustee's individual use of the organization’s facilities and services through the year. This enables special focused events and promotions for just those individuals most likely to be interested in these specialized offerings. Similarly, in the hospital capital campaign described earlier (see Chapter 5), they now have master records that track every interaction of a patient with the hospital (prescriptions, office visits, any test by a doctor). As a result, the patient at home, the involved physicians, and physician assistants all know what has happened to the patient on a consistent basis. Costing the hospital $100 million to install, this capability and transparency were worth every dollar in terms of enhanced service from a patient's view. From the hospital's view, it came to be seen that it was offering higher and more consistent service levels across the patient base. This is what is happening in development to donor management.

These data-linking capabilities are directly relevant to development in so many ways. Today, as a matter of course, in well-architected systems, records of individual calls and the known activities of major donors and prospects are kept together in interlinked electronic form. This allows better tracking of the emerging interests of a donor. It also allows a new trustee or new major gifts officer to pick up the threads of a relationship as it has evolved over the years and quickly be prepared to move it forward.

At a recently studied school, for example, no one in the development department had been there more than five years. Consequently, there were no deep longitudinal personal relationships between today's development officers and potential donors. Fortunately, the procedures and files designed and installed by their predecessors in the development department had been deep and for the most part accurate. This allowed the old relationships to be picked up by the new officers with much less spillage than would otherwise have been the case.

This type of integrated data allows the knowledgeable crafting of targeted invitation lists for cultivation events. It can also trigger identification of individuals who can give talks at appropriate institution events or who can be hosts at alumni events. Particularly for organizations with long histories, it is easy for significant potential donors to be lost in the cracks and not be used in these relationship-strengthening activities. All this can now be managed in a more comprehensive and holistic way. This is the great contribution that Oracle, SAP, and their ilk have made to development.

Engaging potential supporters as members of a planning committee when one is gearing up for a reunion or launching a capital campaign is often a wonderful way to encourage much deeper personal involvement and self-solicitation. All the time the individual is in the room developing potential names for development calls and participating in discussions, they are also soliciting themselves. Similarly, the act of thinking who is appropriate for a task deepens your own understanding of and often commitment to a project. These new systems help target the right people for these roles.

In the same vein, having to introduce a project leader to a meeting of potential donors forces the introducers to learn more about the project so as to sound knowledgeable in their introduction. In short, the combination of internal data and carefully searching external files via Google can help build richer donor profiles. These profiles help both trustees and development professionals better manage potential donor relationships. Good 2020 development is deeply data driven!!

Handheld Portable Intelligence

The new technologies of the iPhone have allowed a total transformation of what occurs in the prospect's home or office in a development presentation. Instead of paper reports and a structured walk-through, very different, far more interactive scenarios can occur. For example, an initial video presentation of a building project by the development officer can be followed by a customized virtual tour of the inside of the facility. This can be followed by a description of the fundraising to date and a specific ask for the prospect's support. All this in the donor's home or office! Using an iPad with its great colors, long battery life, and access to relevant data across the Internet is how the ask is playing out today for an increasing number of donors. Depending on the user's tolerance for complexity, the presentation can be rich and all encompassing or vastly more general, touching qualitatively only the key highlights of the project. It is the solicitor's call on how to play it. Today's technology allows vast amounts of sophistication in data presentations at the donor interface, if that is what the solicitor thinks is called for.

Changing Donor Contact

Each generation is motivated by different stimuli. The older generation for the most part is still paper oriented. Alumni magazines on paper are good reading for them as they sit in a chair in the evening watching TV. A report of donors by size of gift or by class is something to be browsed through in a time of leisure, hopefully stimulating thoughts of personally being on the more generous side as they see what others have done.

Younger donors are different. They communicate voraciously through Twitter, Instagram, and text messaging. Twitter can pick up the latest rumors. It communicates broadly your latest view on anything to your followers. Similarly, Instagram can bring enormous attention to an issue. For example, in the mid-2020 Black Lives Matter uproar, alumni of some 70 secondary schools and universities in the Northeast United States created Instagram accounts entitled Black Lives@XYZ school. Instantly, alumni and current students began posting deeply unfavorable comments to these accounts based on their personal experiences at the institution. These posts instantaneously brought enormous public and internal pressure on the administration and trustees of these institutions to make change. Many of the institutions subsequently put special committees of the board and groups associated with the institution together to engage the issue. We live in a fast-moving global information world, which has swept up almost all aspects of development operations.

Summary

In short, the ask still remains the central task of development. However, it takes place today in a revolutionarily different information environment, one in which potential donors are shaped by many more different types of electronic information and forces than they were in the past. Development in the information age is simply different! It is a massively capital-intensive activity with communications gear, portable intelligence in iPads, large relational databases, and social-media software packages. Realistically, however, in a world increasingly technology-enabled, large gifts from those more seasoned in years will still often be achieved by the interpersonal strategies of the past.