Innovate? How about stealing ideas?

SOFII is a charity that exists just to help fundraisers world-wide, for free. Ken Burnett sent me this email...

Sean Triner

"Hi Sean

Congratulations on your recession-watch blog. Very timely, useful and much needed.

Tough times, of course, can also produce the best ideas. Many currently established methods of donor acquisition can be seen to have arisen as innovations when the need was greatest. See ActionAid’s insert story on SOFII, and Greenpeace’s development of face-to-face.

Plus an array of legacy marketing and other initiatives that arose directly out of fundraising uncertainty.

The whole idea of SOFII itself becomes even more appropriate in tough times. Why trouble to think of your own great idea if you can borrow someone else’s? Why take a risk testing the unknown when you can see how well or otherwise similar initiatives fared, when used by others?

To quote (very reluctantly) Donald Rumsfeld, fundraisers suffer from too many ‘unknown unknowns’, particularly in hard times.

So I hope you’ll direct your followers to SOFII, where as many of the ‘known knowns’ as we can uncover are being gathered and displayed to help fundraisers to shed light on the best ways of doing things, however hard times get. And all for free, too.

Keep thinking

Ken Burnett, SOFII– The Showcase of Fundraising Innovation and Inspiration
ken@sofii.org, http://www.sofii.org"

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