What a massive dense pancake can teach us about data hygiene Liam Thorp was not supposed to be next in line for a COVID-19 vaccine.  He’s a 32-year-old Liverpool native with no underlying health conditions.  He describes himself as chunky but not obese. So why did he get the call?  Because the database had, instead...

Catching up on silicon-based fundraising 25 years and one day ago today, a computer program called Deep Blue beat the human chess champion Garry Kasparov for the first time ever.  Since then, AI/machine learning passed many other areas that had been humans’ domains: Jeopardy in 2011!, text-based conversations in 2014, Go in 2017, contract law...

Save donor privacy Some donors want to have their name in lights, in the annual report, on the building, on a pew: loud and in public. And some donors want just the opposite: for their philanthropy to be a private event. Some religions even counsel their adherents that their good deeds and giving are not...

The coming rising paper costs by Clint Jorgenson, Director of Purchasing, Barton Cotton Graphics The economic hardships caused by Covid-19 has only escalated demand pressures and uncertainty within the paper market. Magazine ad pages and catalog circulation were both down year-over-year, continuing their downward trend. We have seen some much-needed improvement, the long-term impact of...

Spinach shows the power of triggered email Yes, spinach.  MIT engineers have used nanotechnology to create a type of spinach that can send emails.  If the spinach detects a compound found in explosives in the soil, it emits a signal that’s picked up by an infrared camera, which then emails scientists. Or, in other words,...

The monthly giving impact of… Giving Tuesday? We’ve talked in our Sustainer Revolution white paper that much of the future growth in direct marketing fundraising will be from monthly giving.  But there are some times of the year that are seem bound up with one-time giving: end of year, Giving Tuesday, traditional mail membership drives....

Now is the winter of our (mail) discontent By Carolyn Angelini, Director of Resource and Postal Affairs, Production Solutions Last month, we warned that a combination of record-high package volume and short staffing at USPS would lead to delays. And, boy, did it.  First Class Delivery in December averaged around 6.8 days which is about...

Beyond who sits in a chair Yesterday, a different man sat in a chair behind a desk.  It’s a nice chair.  And a nice desk – a gift from Queen Victoria, built from the timbers of the HMS Resolute after the United States helped with that vessel’s rescue. Much time and treasure were spent on...

Did you fund COVID or election misinformation? Because over a thousand different brands did. That was the conclusion of NewsGuard’s Election Misinformation Tracking Center, looking at advertising patterns on untrustworthy websites.  Progressive Insurance placed 298 ads across 25 election misinformation web sites.  Walmart ran ads on a site that claimed that Bill Gates planned COVID-19...

New year, fresh start You probably set some New Year’s resolutions. And you might even have broken some already.  (For me, it was to not swear at politics — I think the Times Square ball might still have been bouncing when that one went out the window.) Why do we start the new year with...