Why My First Time Attending NTEN’s Nonprofit Technology Conference Was Disappointing

The 80/20 rule works for nonprofits. Most organizations get 10 to 20 percent of their gifts and 80 to 90 percent of their revenue from major gifts (including planned gifts). So why was NTEN’s Nonprofit Technology Conference completely absent any discussion of the use of technology for generating major and planned gifts?
I really don’t know.
Instead you could learn lots of nerdy things that are somewhat valuable but, from a marketing perspective, won’t really move the needle much. Check out some of these hip conference agenda titles:

• Measuring the success of your blog through content, social media and analytics
• Grow your nonprofit with email and social media
• Email matters – two case studies from acquisition to conversion

I’m about as geeky as they get but even I couldn’t understand what they were talking about in some of the presentations.
Confucius once said, “Life is really simple but we insist on making it complicated.”
Albert Einstein said, “If you can’t explain it to a six year old, you don’t understand it yourself.”
And, lastly, my hero Steve Jobs said, “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication” in his early Mac ad campaigns
If you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time you know that I’m a big fan of the simplicity of the 80/20 rule. That’s because I know that it works. I’ve seen it work over and over again. I also know that one of the most effective marketing best practices is to focus on your bread and butter because that will expand it further.
So, while I was glad to see a growing focus on technology in the nonprofit sector at NTEN’s Nonprofit Technology Conference, I was tremendously disappointed that 100% of that focus was aimed at the “20” instead of the “80”.