#183 | How can fundraising professionals better navigate radical uncertainty?

Today I enjoyed the opportunity to talk with best-selling author and 4x TED-speaker Margaret Heffernan about her new book Uncharted: How To Map the Future. Our conversation began with what she refers to as prediction addiction; our deep-seated need to predict the future. Throughout my fundraising career, I have observed this addiction to prediction playing out in our being hesitant to call a donor, running wealth screen reports as if they were credit checks, and criticizing each other’s forecasts of the effects of yet-to-be enacted tax legislation. It all stems from a desire to avoid what we fear the most: uncertainty.

As I shared with Margaret, there never seems to be a shortage of those in our space who will try to capitalize on our addiction. They will sell us anything that makes us feel more content in a world that is not deterministic. Heffernan calls this the commercialization of fantasy: “the belief that the future is knowable, that all life is susceptible to certain laws if we could only figure out what they were, and that there are some special people or processes that can reveal what the future holds.“ 

As always, we are grateful to OneCause for being our sponsor. And if you’d like more information about Responsive’s training programs, email me at jason@responsivefundraising.com