Hello friends,

Welcome back to Theory of Change, where I try to help leaders, founders, and creators build organisations that donors trust, teams love, and society actually needs.

Recently, I’ve been exploring frameworks and ideologies imported from the marketing and tech world that don’t always survive contact with the nonprofit world.

This week: Funnels. 

I’ve built plenty of them myself, from product launches to donor journeys, and I still think the discipline of clarifying what people are trying to achieve is useful. But we forget that the funnel’s promise to take people from awareness to action was born in adland, not civic activism. And we need to talk about it.

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WHAT IT'S SUPPOSED TO BE

The marketing funnel has been around for more than a century. The earliest roots probably lie with Elias St. Elmo Lewis in 1898 and the Attention, Interest, Desire, Action model (AIDA to its friends). It was a way of explaining how buyers move from first hearing about something to making a purchase.

Over time, it’s become the backbone of modern marketing. Every brand campaign, ad platform, and CRM dashboard still echoes that simple logic: fill the top with awareness, nurture interest in the middle, and convert a small percentage at the bottom. The paradigm has survived every technological shift from billboards to TikTok with a pretty little promise: if you can just move enough people through each stage, you’ll win.

And honestly, in the nonprofit world, that discipline can be helpful too. I’ve used it a lot with my clients (and wrote about how to implement Pirate Metrics waaay back in edition #005).

A funnel can clarify your intent; it can stop you from broadcasting into the void. When you’re running campaigns, mobilising supporters, or recruiting volunteers, that structure can turn vague ambition into a sequence of intentional steps. Used lightly, it’s a way of bringing focus to complex, under-resourced work.

But I see a lot of unthinking, wholescale adoption into contexts where it’s inappropriate at best, and dangerous at worst.

WHERE IT FALLS APART

So many things I could talk about here. But let’s focus on three.

1. The modern funnel was built for a world of clicks, tracking pixels, and attribution models designed to prove that every sale can be engineered. It feeds the myth of the rational actor, a tidy story where individuals move step by step toward a choice. But real participation is messy! People drift in, buy a PS5, drop out, come back months later, bring a new boyfriend, get disillusioned, reconnect through a different cause. Relationships in civic life are recursive, emotional, and social. The funnel can’t see that complexity.

2. Funnels privilege extraction over exchange. They treat attention and trust as raw material to be processed. Community members become audience segments and relationships turn into retention metrics. And if you’ve learned one thing from these past 12 weeks, I hope that it’s that social change isn’t about capturing people. It’s about circulating value.

3. We’re entering an era where users (and increasingly their AI agents) decide what they see, when, and how. The web is fragmenting into agentic ecosystems, where algorithms and personal assistants negotiate on people’s behalf. Linear funnels won’t survive the shift, imho.

A BETTER WAY TO THINK ABOUT IT

Think in terms of ecosystems, not pipelines. We’re not dealing with oil here, but friends and neighbours and co-workers.

The organisations that will thrive as the web becomes more agentic are those that build trust-based networks. Pipelines extract; ecosystems circulate.

In an ecosystem model:

1. People aren’t leads; they’re participants with their own intentions and constraints.

2. Engagement isn’t conversion; it’s about contribution of knowledge, energy, credibility, funds, and (occasionally) tea and biscuits.

3. Success isn’t retention; it’s reciprocity. It’s how value and trust move between community members over time.

So instead of thinking about converting awareness to action, the nonprofit ninjas among you are designing multiple entry points and looping routes back in.

Take a donation drive. In a funnel, the goal is to push someone from your socials to a payment page with as little friction as possible. An ecosystem approach does something else: it designs experiences that instigate further participation.

That might mean a short impact testimonial landing in the donor’s inbox the next day; a community event where online supporters meet the people behind the work; or a small, tangible gesture that signals hey you’re part of this now.

Each moment creates what some call UIRL (URL + IRL!) energy where digital interactions spill into the real world and back again. A Bluesky post leads to a conversation, a donation leads to a townhall meeting, a volunteer shift becomes a post others want to share.

Someone might donate, then invite a friend, join a call, or lend expertise six months later. Each action adds to a pattern of relationship capital/karma that can be observed, nurtured, and strengthened. What matters isn’t a single conversion, but the density of connections around your mission.

TRY IT THIS WEEK

1. Thunderbird raised over $10 million in community donations in 2024 by replacing one-way marketing with two-way conversations. They invite supporters to test tools, share feedback, and co-create campaigns rather than just fund them. Read more.

Try today: Choose one stage of your next campaign and replace a “broadcast” with a co-design moment: an open Q&A, a poll, or a public draft for comment.

2. Queer in AI sustains a global volunteer network by rejecting linear “member journeys”. Participants pick how they want to contribute (organising, mentoring, or shaping research agendas). Read more.

Try today: Offer three self-selectable roles in your next outreach (e.g. amplify, co-create, host). Track which paths people choose and what keeps them coming back.

3. Gamers Engaged built an active donor-player community by mapping motivations (community, creativity, impact) and crafting tailored experiences for each. Read more.

Try today: Identify three loyalty loops around your mission (e.g. social connection, learning, contribution). For each, design one small experience that rewards return participation.

I’m pretty convinced that the next web and the next phase of civic life will be built on consent and co-creation. Upon agency, true agency.. not agents. The organisations that recirculate trust patiently and relationally will be the ones that survive.

🌊 WAVE GOODBYE 🌊

Thanks for reading. This was supposed to be the twelfth and final edition of this season! I’ve loved writing it, and judging by your messages, you’ve enjoyed reading it too.

The series has given me space to dig deeper into my own practice, to take clearer positions, and to test ideas out loud. My hope is that it’s helped you do the same: to question easy orthodoxies, especially the ones imported wholesale from the corporate world, and to build your own, more grounded ways of working.

I was planning to take a break for a fortnight while I prepare for the next season (winter is coming!).

But I'm due to have an operation on my hand at the end of November, so rather than starting the new season now, I'm going to extend this one by a few weeks, take December off, and come back in the new year with the new season.

Hope that's ok with you!

Adam

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