What’s Eating The List Industry?

For the sixth month in a row, they published one of my columns on The NonProfit Times web editorial page. You should go read the entire post on their site... along with an articles by Eleanor Clift and Rick Cohen.

Here's a teaser:

"During the past year, the [list] industry has endured a combination of: shrinking list universes, a weakening economy, lots of bad publicity, increasingly organized backlash against “junk mail,” and the aggressive expansion of cooperative databases. More importantly, nonprofits with established mail programs are beginning to ask questions about the saturation of the shared donor universes and whether there are better ways to reach new donors."

I tried to explore each of those factors in the piece... although, admittedly I'm not really what you could call "knee-deep" in the list industry... so I'm observing many of these patterns from afar. If you disagree, I'd love to hear about it.