Fundraising Connection: Beware the Survey

My kids would say sometimes I don't listen. And sometimes, I don't.

I watch. For example, my kid says, "I will mow the grass and be most happy to receive the modest stipend you offer for this effort, dearest mother." But after nightfall the grass is uncut. My little survey failed to deliver accurate information. You are thinking, "Your kid is lazy." And, yep, sometimes that is so.

But what really happened is that his Present Self answered the question to the best of his ability. "Not a terrible chore and I need the money," he thought. But his Future Self, who got signed up to mow the grass, did not buy in. "I'm tired. I don't want to take another shower. I don't want the money that badly." Those are effectively two different people with two different sets of circumstances and two different decision-making data sets that led to two different outcomes.

While having a barbecue in the backyard with uncut grass is not a tragedy, planning an event based on information collected in the same way can be.

Last year I attended the newly formed Engage Peer-to-Peer Conference. Lots of really smart people in the peer-to-peer fundraising industry were sharing ideas with great value.

But I kept hearing some phrases in the room that made me wince: "Our fundraisers don't think …" and "Our fundraisers don't want …" and "The feedback I get is …" I interpreted those phrases to mean, "We asked them, and this is what they said, so we took action based on their answers." They were typically talking about Present Self answers.

If we make decisions and plans based on those answers, we are most often surprised and disappointed when the surveyed group does not behave as expected. And, in a worst-case scenario, our "survey" is actually composed of taking phone calls from a few incredibly vocal advocates for the way things ought to be. Reacting to that sort of data is like taking the average height of a basketball team composed of one 8-footer and four 5-footers. That data set does not tell a true story, and if we plan and make decisions based on it, we fail.