8.12: Why won't paper die?

Everyone's drumming their fingers, waiting for paper to expire as a communications medium. Sorry.

How many ways do I LOVE Tom Belford's tip-site, The Agitator? Well, who has time. Consider his site served with deepest admiration.

One thing, though.

Recently, the estimable Mr. Belford took a foul stab at print publications. In his column, he kinda, sorta said: Get ready!!! Get modern!!! Paper newsletters are about to NOT work!!!

Tom Belford's faith in a communications revolution that sees paper retired (and trees restored) isn't visionary. It's lame.

Maybe the most frequently asked question at my workshops is some variation on: "When can I stop mailing my printed newsletter and go entirely electronic?" The question has become so common, that I sometimes award a free book to the first person who brings it up.

The correct answer is something like "not in the foreseeable future."

It worries me that many in fundraising assume that mailed paper is a dying medium. Paper is NOT (spread the word) being supplanted by electrons. It's simply being augmented. Direct mail is certainly far from dead; and outside the U.S., in "developing" philanthropic marketplaces like France, it is the raging king of all things. Paper donor newsletters, for another example, can produce amazing results in the right hands (as Merkle/Domain's work proves).

My real bottom line: People always want something easier, faster, cheaper. Sending paper through the mail is none of the above. And people assume electronic is ALL of the above; but it isn't.

Doing your communications carefully, with imagination and expert-level training, are the true secrets to success.

As Kris Hermanns, director of development at the National Center for Lesbian Rights, has noted, "If you're not getting results with your paper newsletter, you're not going to get results with your electronic one either." The NCLR is a good example of what effective communications programs look like: they use BOTH paper and electrons to talk to donors, to profitable effect.

Fundraisers pray for the day when someone announces: "You can stop with the paper now. Electrons are all you really need." But that day, if it ever comes, is at least a generation away.

Takeaway: Paper-haters, consider this report from the Washington Post, "The Facebook application Causes, hugely popular among nonprofit organizations seeking to raise money online, has been largely ineffective in its first two years, trailing direct mail, fundraising events and other more traditional methods of soliciting contributions. Only a tiny fraction of the 179,000 nonprofits that have turned to Causes as an inexpensive and green way to seek donations have brought in even $1,000, according to data available on the Causes developers' site." (April 22, 2009)