The Netflix Approach to Fundraising no longer passes the believability test.
This is the second in a four-part series about The Netflix Approach to Fundraising. The first in this series can be found here.
Our regular readers will recall the conversation I had with a retired gentleman contemplating his charitable giving. While learning about our work, he asked about the curious phenomenon of nonprofit organizations soliciting $19 a month from prospective donors. Chuckling, he wondered why anyone would take such an approach seriously. His skepticism provided an opportunity for me to share what our team at Responsive sees as a major hurdle in contemporary fundraising practices: what we refer to as The Netflix Approach to Fundraising.
In order to understand why this approach is so problematic, let’s begin by recognizing that Netflix does more than provide a streaming service. Netflix tells a story that’s all about us. The platform is designed to affirm our personal beliefs, align recommendations with what we liked in the past, and create a habit that verges on addiction. It’s no coincidence that binge-watching has become one of our favorite pastimes. Applying the same logic to fundraising should raise greater concerns than it does. We should wonder how we can be so fascinated with platforms that cater to such intense individualism and still have the ability to effectively address complex social problems.
I’m reminded of the story Netflix tells when our family gathers in the living room with the hopes of enjoying a film together. Unlike half a century ago, when families gathered around a single television set to watch limited content from a handful of networks, today's experience is not as communal. With our individual viewing habits tracked for years, Netflix recommends options tailored to everyone’s individual preferences, making the collective experience of enjoying a film together almost impossible. Affirmed in our decisions and convinced of the superiority of our individual decision-making abilities, we disperse to our private spaces, watching Netflix on our personal devices.
Philip Conklin describes the Netflix environment as a "solipsistic approach to movie watching" where everything reinforces who we are and how we want to see the world.1 When we log in, we encounter a place designed specifically to our liking. While each member of our family can escape to their own worlds in order to be entertained in accordance with our personal preferences, the experience doesn’t represent reality. The platform merely creates an illusion that allows us to momentarily forget that the world doesn’t revolve around us. Such a worldview doesn’t get us very far once we’re logged off. It’s a story that isn’t true.
In order to see how the logic of Netflix is applied to contemporary fundraising, we need only look for the story with which we’ve all grown rather comfortable. It’s the story with a simple explanation and an easy solution that demands only an uncoordinated, individualized response and puts band-aids on complex problems. It’s the story of alleviating short-term symptoms rather than addressing root causes. Absent the effectiveness of this story, The Netflix Approach to Fundraising would never have worked as well as it has.
Despite its success in the past, a growing number of us have wised up and come to realize that we have been duped into believing a fairy tale. Like the skepticism that I encountered in my conversation, most of us have encountered this story so many times, in so many places, that we need only see an offer to single-handedly change the world with $19 a month to get our guards up. We’ve developed the intuition to know that the more comforting the story happens to be, the more skeptical we should become.
After decades of finding the same story in their mailboxes, now bombarding their inboxes, it’s no longer as believable as it once was. Our donors have become what behavioral scientists Emre Soyer and Robin Hogarth refer to as “story skeptics” - skeptical of the neat and tidy stories that have been spun together with “oversimplifications, flawed perceptions of cause and effect, and misleading overgeneralizations.” Soyer and Hogarth explain how professional communities often rely on smart, knowledgeable pioneers who conceive these stories. These stories withstand the test of time in large part because storytellers develop an unshakable confidence in them and then mentor successors who can be counted on to continue telling them.2
In his book, The Divide, Jason Hickel explains how a “PR gimmick” eventually became the affirming story that many charities continue to tell today. During his second inaugural address, Harry Truman knew that Americans needed a pep talk. Without a plan in place, Truman gave Americans a seemingly simple solution to the familiar problem of global inequality. Truman announced that the global north would become the heroes of those in the global south. Truman’s speech made Americans feel good about themselves, affirmed their place in the world, and made them proud of their achievements, convincing them that they were smarter, more innovative, and harder working.3
Decades later, this story is still a familiar, comforting one that most of us have, at one time or another, believed and supported. Those who have bought a pair of TOMS, sponsored a child in Zambia, or spent a gap-year in Honduras have all been believers in this story. Hickel explains that he spent much of his young adult life passionately believing in Truman’s story. He spent his last year in college working for a microfinance organization and, after graduation, went to work for World Vision where he found the story being borrowed more or less verbatim from Truman. When he noticed that interventions were ignoring root causes; that multiple relief organizations were in the same places putting band-aids on the same complex problems; and that, instead of getting better, everything was just getting worse, Hickel started asking questions and was told not to rock the boat.4
While Hickel credits the story for having a good run, he insists its believability has been waning for quite some time. Hickel explains that those organizations that bet the farm on Truman’s Four Points are now in the midst of an existential crisis. As confidence in this story continues to decline and donor bases shrink, organizations are spending big dollars in hopes of rekindling faith in a story that has lost so many believers. Hickel says everywhere he goes he finds a similar skepticism with people yearning for his critique, sensing something disingenuous in the official narrative.5
In an era where trust is waning, whether in narratives from the marketplace, politicians, or local charities, skepticism prevails. As much as the experts will insist otherwise, The Netflix Approach to Fundraising no longer passes the believability test. Today’s donors are increasingly doubtful of seemingly too-good-to-be-true stories, reflecting a skepticism akin to that which Hickel has encountered in the field and like the questions I encountered on my trip home several weeks ago. Stories that merely affirm identities, bolster beliefs, and require only nominal contributions are met with suspicion. As we will continue to discuss in this series, an active role in solving our world’s complex problems should be accompanied by higher expectations and shouldn’t be as easy as signing up for a streaming service.
The first in this four-part series can be found here.
If your organization wants to understand how to raise extraordinary levels of support by way of meaningful relationships and higher expectations, our team at Responsive would welcome the opportunity to help you do that. If you’re interested in learning more, email me and/or our managing partner, Michael Dixon. We will be happy to volunteer an hour to get to know you and to explore with you what a partnership with our team might look like.
Want to host the Responsive Fundraising Roadshow?
We would welcome the opportunity to host the Responsive Fundraising Roadshow in your community. Since 2014, our team has been organizing high-quality, one-day roadshows in partnership with nonprofit leaders who want to showcase their space and champion thought-provoking and highly-interactive fundraising training for their nonprofit community.
Our hosts have included the Children’s Defense Fund in DC, the Henry Ford Health Center in Detroit, Cause Leadership in Toronto, Mission Capital in Austin, North Texas Food Bank in Dallas and The Gateway School in New York City. Most recently, in partnership with the Nonprofit Association of the Midlands, we hosted our most successful roadshow to date in Omaha. If you’d like to explore the idea of hosting the Responsive Fundraising Roadshow, email us today.
https://www.theperipherymag.com/on-the-arts-filmgoing-on-the-internet-netflix
Soyer, E., Hogarth, R. M. (2020). The Myth of Experience: Why We Learn the Wrong Lessons, and Ways to Correct Them. United States: PublicAffairs.
Hickel, J. (2017). The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and Its Solutions. United Kingdom: Random House.
Ibid.
Ibid.