How to succeed when everything is changing

Change is coming at us so fast right now: new digital media channels. AI. Sweeping changes in culture and politics. It can be overwhelming. It can even make you feel paralyzed at times.

The best way to handle it is to be flexible, pay attention … and know what isn’t changing.

That’s why I love this nugget from The Knowledge Project Podcast:

…when everything changes, the real edge is knowing what doesn’t.”

(Bruce Flatt, CEO of Brookfield, a large investment management company.)

We focus on the leading edge people in times of change. The inventors and innovators. But for every big winner, there are a lot of people (thousands of them) who tried and failed. Those who narrowly missed out because of timing or execution. Who got cheated along the way. Or were just unlucky. That’s the way it goes.

There’s a much larger class of winners who adjusted to change by focusing on the deeper realities that continues beneath the shiny new stuff.

For fundraisers, this means that while the ways we create our messages, or the ways we deliver them to donors and the ways donors respond change — the underlying reasons donors give don’t change.

Human psychology is the same now as it always has been.

Donors give because they care and want to do good things. Donors love to give. Donors respond to urgency, powerful storytelling, and clear calls to action. Donors give more when we build meaningful relationships with them.

The new tools — the good ones, anyway — make all of that easier and better for us. Especially if we keep a steady hand on the fundamentals.

Maybe someone is about to invent some kind of the “Amazon” for philanthropy that really disrupts fundraising as we know it. Maybe that will be you.

But likely it won’t be you or me. The odds are against us. If (when) that big disruption happens, a lot of us will be harmed or helped by it … depending on how well they remember the things the don’t change.