How you can find innovation in fundraising

Everyone wants innovation. Because things could be better. And every innovation creates the need for more innovation. Fall asleep on the job, and you could find yourself caught in a trap.

I recently came across a wonderful article in Mental Floss that tells us a thing or two about real-world innovation: The History of CTRL + ALT + DELETE.

In the spring of 1981, a programmer named David Bradley was working on IBM’s personal computer project.

Five months into the project, he created one of the most important keyboard shortcuts every: ctrl+alt+del.

“It was five minutes, 10 minutes of activity,” Bradley said, “and then I moved on to the next of the 100 things that needed to get done.”

The “three-fingered salute” was a big deal, a powerful innovation. It saved a ton of time and helped solve the kinds of mysterious problems that plague personal computer users, especially when they were new.

Bradley’s 10-minute invention tells us a lot about innovation that can help fundraisers think clearly about where it comes from and how to foster it:

• Some of the most important innovations don’t seem important at first.
• Small innovations can matter a lot.
• Innovations are more likely to happen when you’re trying to solve a problem. Not so much when you’re trying to innovate.

Maybe your path to innovation isn’t so much through seeking innovation, but through improving things, looking for better ways, solving perennial problems.

Like these things all nonprofits should be focusing on, from A Direct Solution, at How Important Is Artificial Intelligence If You’re Not Even Doing the Basics?

• Send Thank-You Letters ASAP
• Tell Donors How Their Gifts Are Making a Difference
• Engage Your Donors in Ways That Best Fit Your Mission
• Keep Your Data Clean and Updated
• Have a Donor Engagement Plan

Put your energy toward things like that.

Maybe you’ll improve donor retention and revenue.

Or maybe you’ll stumble across some equivalent of ctrl+alt+del that changes the world.