What's wrong with social media fundraising?

If you have a thick skin, do what The Agitator did recently and say something critical about the use of social media for fundraising: In Defense Of Serious Fundraising Dialogue.

What happens is this: A lot of 140-character shouting. You are an ignorant dinosaur.

Which is too bad, because, as the Agitator notes:

The solid, professional, serious advancement of our trade ... is seriously diminished by those who flit about on the channels, all thumbs, no thought. Those who have little idea what fundraising is all about, often because they have minimal experiential grounding in what's important and why.

Not long ago, I was held captive on a phone conference where a new media expert revealed his grand plan for a nonprofit organization's bold new future in social media.

Beside the fact that the expert's entire case for his grand plan was based on anecdotes about dissimilar situations, it also had several fatal flaws that anyone with even minimal fundraising experience would not have made:

• The entire campaign was hidden under a puzzling new sub-brand.
• There were no benefits -- just features.
• There was no specific call to action. If the first two problems don't kill the campaign, this one will finish it off.

The campaign is probably going to fail.

And it's going to fail because when social media and other new channels became the topic of conversation, everyone's brain turned off. They willingly chose to be hypnotized by a Dangerously Ignorant Guru who doesn't actually understand the basics of human motivation.

The end result: After the failure, this organization will likely decide social media "doesn't work." Which will only be half-right at best. A better conclusion: When you do it wrong, it doesn't work. Who knows what might happen when you do it right?

Social media of some kind will probably eventually become important in fundraising. But that's not going to happen until discussions and plans become based on facts, not noise, anecdotes, or ideology.