The Donor's Genotype: A Biological Theory of Fundraising

Welcome to this edition of the Click and Pledge's fundraising command center podcast, where we talk the why, the what, and the how in the Click and Pledge's ecosystem.

And this is the why series.

Today, we're doing something. Well, it's one of the most intellectually satisfying and frankly audacious deep dives we've ever tried.

I think so, yeah. We are connecting two universes that seem completely separate.

On one hand, you've got evolutionary biology, DNA, species, survival.

And on the other, modern fundraising campaigns, donors, impact. It sounds like an unlikely pairing.

But what we found, what we suggest, is that these two fields are built on an identical, really powerful structure for understanding change.

And not just change, but development and most importantly, prediction.

So our mission today is to build a unified biological theory of donor intelligence right here.

We're gonna map four core biological concepts: genotype, phenotype, ontogeny, and phylogeny. And we're going to map them directly onto the tools you use.

Tools like the BENNA score, donor actions, know, the whole evolution of your donor base.

And this is so much more than just a clever analogy.

Right. It's a new lens. It's for understanding not just what your donors do, but who they are.

How they develop over time. And maybe the biggest piece of how your entire donor population is evolving.

This is really the shift from just reacting to, well, truly anticipating the future.

Okay, so where do we even start with this?

Dr: We have to start with the brain. Before we touch genetics, have to talk about how a decision is made.

Dr: Yes, exactly. Because every single decision, especially the decision to give, is a neurological event. It's all rooted in prediction.

So we have to introduce this concept of mentalizing.

Right. Mentalizing is basically the brain's ability to imagine a future state for yourself or for others.

And for fundraising, this means a potential donor before they even think about clicking donate.

They run a simulation, a really fast, low cost mental simulation.

They're asking themselves, what will it feel like if I do this?

Is this gonna be easy? Do I trust them? If that imagined outcome feels good, if it feels low friction.

They act. If it raises red flags, too much effort, too much confusion

They're gone. They abandon the action.

So our job as fundraisers is to mentalize the donors next move.

We have to model who they're likely to become, the version of them that's engaged and generous, and we have to do that before we communicate.

You have to feed their brain the right simulation.

Exactly. And this connects directly to a huge idea in neuroscience.

Carl Friston's free energy principle.

That's the one. It sounds really complex, but the idea is that the brain is basically a prediction machine that tries to minimize surprise.

It wants to reduce the cost of processing information.

Yes. So when a donor gets an email, their brain is scanning it for things that don't fit. For prediction errors, for surprise.

So what's an example of high surprise?

High surprise or high free energy is just an irrelevant ask. Imagine a donor who only gives to local animal shelters.

Okay.

And suddenly they get a huge appeal for international climate change. That's a massive surprise. It's completely misaligned with who they are.

And the brain has to work way too hard to process it.

And the easiest path is just delete or unsubscribe.

So the goal is to make our communication super predictable, low friction, aligned with their BENE score.

So you minimize that mental cost. If the message fits their pattern, it's easy. They're way more likely to engage.

And this leads to a really hard truth we have to face.

I think I know where you're going with this.

Nobody wakes up in the morning, looks at the $10 in their wallet and asks, Which nonprofit should I give this to?

It just doesn't happen. Giving is not the default state.

No. It's an active choice. You have to overcome coffee, bills, everything else.

Which means our models have to be so good, so predictive, that our signal can actually break through all that noise.

And to get that kind of predictive power, we need a better framework.

And that's where biology comes in. Let's start with the most basic distinction. Potential versus action.

Genotype versus phenotype. Okay, let's define genotype first.

The genotype is, the underlying code. It's the hidden blueprint, the DNA.

And not what you see.

No. It represents the potential of an organism. What it could become if the conditions are right.

And this is our first big mapping. We suggest that the genotype is the BENE score.

It's a perfect one to one fit really because the BENE score isn't an action. Right. It's the model of a donor's propensity encoded under the surface. It's that latent state we infer from all their past signals.

Their history, their engagement, their context, everything.

It's the behavioral genotype. It tells us what a donor is capable of.

Even if they've been dormant for six months, the potential is still there in the code.

But potential is nothing without action, right? Yeah. If the genotype is the blueprint

Then we need the building. The thing you can actually see.

And that is

The observable reality.

Exactly. The phenotype is the visible expression of that genotype. It's what the organism actually does. And in fundraising, the phenotype is simply the dooner action.

This is the data that most people focus on. The gift.

The gift, But also the email open, the event registration, the volunteer hour.

Or even negative actions. An unsubscribe. A spam report.

All of it. The phenotype is any observable output. So, if a donor with a high BENNIS score, a high potential genotype

Makes a big gift.

Then that phenotype validates our model. It proves the potential was real.

But what if a donor with a low BENNIS score makes a big gift?

Then the phenotype challenges the model. It forces the genotype, the Bennis score, to recalculate and say, wait, this person has more potential than we thought.

So the entire point of the system is to use the genotype, the Bennis score, to predict which signals will trigger the phenotype we want to see.

You're managing the probability that potential becomes reality.

Okay, so we have the blueprint in the action, but donors aren't static. They change.

Right, neither exists in a vacuum, which means we need to add a new dimension.

The dimension of individual growth. This brings us to Ontogeny.

Ontogeny, in biology, is just the development of a single organism over its whole life. From embryo to adult, it's the personal journey.

And our mapping for this is the donor's life cycle arc.

The individual story. The longitudinal narrative of one specific donor.

So this is way more than just a list of transactions.

Oh, much more. Ontogeny is about the milestones. Their first gift, the moment they upgraded to monthly, the path to becoming a major donor.

And also the friction points, where they almost left.

Yes, or the long slide into dormancy and then that crucial moment where you might be able to reactivate them.

This is where it gets really powerful because the genotype, the BENNA score is constantly being updated by this journey, by the ontogeny.

That's the key insight. A donor's genetic expression, their behavior, it shifts based on their experiences with you.

So if a donor goes dormant

Their beta score might dip a little reflecting a lower likelihood but if you reactivate them with the perfect ask

That successful phenotype immediately improves their beta score.

Exactly. It confirms they are still you know genetically viable in your system. Ontogeny gives you the context for where they are on their journey.

Without it, you'd treat a brand new donor and a veteran donor the same way just because their beta scores might look similar for a moment.

And that would be a huge mistake. You have to know the developmental stage.

Okay so we've zoomed way in on the individual now we have to pull back.

All the way back. We need to look at the entire population. And that brings us to our last term, phylogeny.

Phylogeny. This sounds like something you do in a lab with fossils, not in a fundraising office.

It does, but the concept is essential. Phylogeny is the evolution of an entire species over generations.

So how the whole group adapts to its environment.

Correct. And we recommend mapping this to the evolution of the donor population as a whole.

Donor base evolution. So this is about looking outside our own data.

It's about looking at the macro trends that force us to adapt. Think about generational shifts.

Like how Gen Z donors expect total transparency and immediate proof of impact.

Which is fundamentally different from a baby boomer who built a relationship with you over years through direct mail. That's a phylogenetic shift.

Technology is a big one too. The donor species has moved from checks to web forms to mobile.

Now it's QR codes, peer to peer, all of it. If our technology doesn't evolve with the species' preferred way of expressing their phenotype.

The species dies out, or at least our population if it does.

We'll just move to another mission that speaks their language. You also have to factor in economic cycles, cultural shifts, trust in institutions.

All of these big pressures are shaping the donor species.

So what's the strategic value here? Why does a manager need to think about phylogeny?

Feels very big picture.

It dictates long term strategy. If your analysis shows that the attention span of your new donors is half what it was ten years ago.

You can't just tweak a subject line.

No. You have to fundamentally rethink your investment in video, in mobile, in your reporting dashboards. Phylogeny answers the big question, what is our species evolving

And are we prepared to evolve with them?

That's it!

Wow! Okay, so this really is a unified theory. We've used neuroscience to explain the

why and

evolutionary biology to build a framework for how we predict what they'll do.

Let's just, quickly consolidate the four layers because this is the core of it.

Genotype is the Benescore, the latent blueprint, the potential.

Phenotype is the donor action, the observable behavior, the gift, the click.

Three. Ontogeny is the donor lifecycle, the individual journey of growth and change for each donor.

Four. Phylogeny is the donor base evolution, the long term generational shift of your entire population.

And when you put all of that together with mentalizing and the free energy principle, you make the leap.

You really do.

You shift from a world where you're just reacting to past actions, just reading the history books, to one where you can actually anticipate them.

And you do it with high fidelity, with a real strategic plan. You stop seeing donors as just transactions.

Defined only by their last gift.

We recommend seeing them as they truly are, as complex, evolving individuals

Embedded in an evolving population.

And capable of so much more potential than their past actions might suggest. Modeling their genotype, that's the future of fundraising

So here's a final thought for you to take away from this, to bridge this big theory with your work tomorrow. If the BeneScore is the genotype, the raw potential,

what is the one specific low friction signal, the perfect environmental trigger that you can create today?

To make sure that potential is expressed as the positive phenotype, you want to see it tomorrow.

For more information about this and all Click and Pledge products, make sure to visit clickandpledge.com and request for a one on one training or demo, whether you're a client or curious about our platform, just ask us and we will gladly get together with you to chat.

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