You don't know what you don't know

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You don't know what you don't know

A lot of big and mid-sized organizations are chugging along with their email, web, and digital fundraising. They're planning campaigns, building emails and landing pages, doing some testing, running some ads, and (of course) looking at dashboards and reports that tend to say a lot and very little all at once.

Things seem to be going fine. But chances are good that things are breaking down inside and performance isn't as good as it could be. And a crash could be coming.

Last week I got to spend a few hours digging into the email data of an organization experiencing deliverability issues. They were seeing a couple small sets of subscriber domains with huge bounce and delayed delivery rates.

On the whole, the problem seems minor. The affected domains are small - maybe two or three percent of the whole list. If one looked at the overall list performance over several months you might say things look okay. Maybe even fine. Not great but nothing too out of the ordinary.

This is the big lie of dashboards and reports, especially those provided by vendors and software providers. When you don't have internal expertise you don't know what you don't know.

This is super common. A lot of organizations, even large staffed groups, are running big ticket eCRMs, social, and fundraising platforms without much internal tech and data capacity. They have brilliant folks who are communicators, designers, writers, organizers, and program experts. They can plan, write, build, and send a multi-channel campaign.

The numbers look okay. The reports don't vary much. People subscribe. People unsubscribe. People click. They donate. The sun rises. The sun sets. Time marches on.

Does this sound familiar? In the case of this group there were issues with the initial welcome message and real email engagement problems that indicate a possible issue of many emails heading to spam and scream out for earlier list re-engagement (as soon as three months) and other interventions.

Just a few hours of outsider investigation could save them tens of thousands of dollars. It may also reshape how they run their email program and look at the data which has benefits for years to come, even for a very small team.

To be clear, being in this position isn't anyone's fault. Teams get short-staffed. People prioritize. People are presented with data and told all's fine with no reason (or time) to question that, ask what if it's good data, or know what fine, good, or great even mean.

The trick is to make sure your team has the time, space, motivation, and curiosity to dig deeper, learn, and ask good questions. It's okay not to know things. It's better to help your teams recognize what they don't know and solve for it so they can do the brilliant work you need done.

A useful fundraising report for news and nonprofits

Sector fundraising analyses can be shallow or wildly self-serving. Fundraise Up's Pulse of the Donor 2026 is neither (ok, it's a touch of the latter but that's ok). They look at data across their users in the US, UK, Australia, and Canada. They've partnered with Stripe which gives them good data access.

A few useful takeaways:

• Social donors are twice as likely to convert to recurring within 60 days than email donors, despite lower initial gifts.
• Over 50% of 2025 donations were made on mobile devices.
• Search-first donors (they came to your site by search) give the most. This likely reflects intent - people searching for you because they want to give to you, often because they saw something about or from you. It also speaks to the value of search even as SEO shifts to AI search tools.
• Giving through digital wallets is growing but their average gift is lower. I don't think this is because digital wallets = smaller gifts. Rather, it shows us how many more people can and will give if we make it easy, simple, obvious.

There's a lot more to go through. This one is worth sacrificing your email address to read the whole thing.

Bright Ideas

• Rick Beato is a musician and producer who created a new life talking music on YouTube. His channel has over 5.5 million subscribers. Last week Beato compared data centers today to the music business in 2000. Both blindly doomed by their grandiosity. Hard to say what will come but it's an interesting comparison and a well told story.
• Sally Heaven at Raise HECK shared a great set of notes from this year's Nonprofit Technology Conference. You'll find good intel on AI, Donor Advised Funds, organizational data cultures, donor upgrade programs, data co-ops, and Anil Dash's keynote talk.
• Tanya Kak asks a great question: Does everything in the nonprofit sector need to scale? Scale has long been the dream of everyone from philanthropy leaders to fundraisers to organizers to nonprofit technologists. Kak questions the viability of scale in an unpredictable world and asks us to invest support the bridge tools and people of shared infrastructure. I like it.
• College graduates are facing the grimmest job market in years [Sydney Ember / New York Times]

Future Community Jobs

Be sure to check out the full job list. Always fresh. Not very squeezable.

Audience, content, journalism and news roles

• Reporter : Grist [Remote in the US]
• Head of Growth and Audience : Mill Media [Manchester, UK] ⏱️ April 20
• Managing Director of Growth + Revenue, National and Chief Revenue Officer : Courier Newsroom [Remote in the US]
• Senior Content Editor and Writer : Carnegie Corporation of New York [New York City]
• Publisher : Mission Local [San Francisco]
• Senior Director of Audience Development and Analytics : The New Yorker [New York, NY]

Communications

• Director, Digital Product Management : AARP Foundation [Washington, DC]
• Director, Communications : Aspen Institute [Washington, DC]
• Marketing and Communications Director : YMCA of the Rockies [Granby Colorado]
• Strategic Communications Manager, News & Information : Pew Research Center [Washington, D.C]
• Head of Media : Global Witness [United Kingdom] ⏱️ April 14
• Manager, Donor Communications : National Public Radio (NPR) [Washington, DC / Remote in the US]
• Associate Director of Communications : Right to the City Alliance [Remote in the US]
• Digital Communications & Storytelling Manager : WILD Foundation [Remote in the US]

Nonprofit organizations

• Associate Director of Campaigns : Affordable Energy Campaign [Remote in California]
• Field Organizer : Wild Montana [Missoula, MT] ⏱️ April 10
• Chief of Staff : New Roots Institute [Remote]
• Researcher : Evergreen Action [Remote in the US] ⏱️ April 13
• Global Digital Mobilization Lead (Part-time / leave cover until Jan 4, 2027) : The Humane League [Remote / see description] ⏱️ April 3
• Senior Field Representative, California : The Conservation Fund [Remote in California]
• Director of Digital Partnerships : Stand Up America [Remote in the US]
• Community Engagement Manager : Women Moving Millions [New York, NY] ⏱️ April 3
• Governance Strategist and Integrated Campaign Coordinator : SEIU [Washington, DC]
• Director of Policy : All Voting is Local [Washington, DC]
• Director of Government Affairs and Partnerships : Rebuild Local News [Remote in the US]
• Senior Director of Marketing : The National Trust for Historic Preservation [Remote in the US, Washington DC preferred] ⏱️ March 30

Fundraising and Development

• Foundation Relations Officer : National Wildlife Federation [Remote in the US]
• Senior Director, Growth, Strategy, and Donor Relations : PolicyLink [Remote / San Francisco, Washington, DC or New York City preferred]
• Director of Global Philanthropy : The Humane League [Remote in the US]
• Chief Development Officer : The Roosevelt Institute [New York City / Washington, DC]
• Development Director : Vital Impacts [Remote in the US]

Foundations and Philanthropy

• Senior Program Officer : The Freedom Together Foundation [NYC]
• Conservation Networks & Facilitation Manager : WILD Foundation [Remote in the US]

Hey. Ted here. I run Bright+3 where we give changemakers the ideas, inspiration, and tools to create content that builds stronger communities.

I also write this newsletter, Future Community, and run the Future Community Jobs list.