Why fundraising projections suck

Quiz question – what does fundraising have to do with hurricanes?

Answer: both are part of complex systems. The problem is weather forecasters understand that but most nonprofit leaders don’t.

As I write this, there’s a hurricane in the Caribbean making its way to the Florida or Georgia or maybe even S. Carolina coast. The ‘spaghetti’ graphic below shows predicted paths for the hurricane. Each of those spaghetti strands represent the work of different teams of brilliant meteorologists running ginormous supercomputers. And look how much they disagree.

There are many reasons we are addicted to hard fundraising projections. But it’s time to kick the habit.