I finally decided to pull Jeff Brooks’ Donor Power Blog off my list of recommended blogs.

It’s not that I don’t like any of Jeff’s posts. I do. It’s just that more and more of his posts remind me of anti-smoking sites run by tobacco companies; that is, even the phrase ‘donor power’ smacks of the way a marketing exec would put the best possible face on an industry that purports to help people find self-actualization through checkbook charity.

(The link in the preceding paragraph is to Jeff’s post entitled Donors are figuring out how to shut you up, in which Jeff criticizes Charity Navigator for its YouTube video, which shares tips for reducing unwanted solicitations. Jeff calls Charity Navigator’s approach ‘more than a little irresponsible’.)

While I still enjoy Jeff’s posts generally and will continue to read the blog, I simply can’t recommend it in general any more because of my disagreement with the basic relational premise Jeff implies between nonprofits and individuals. The question, ‘What is the relationship between the nonprofit and the individual?’ really is the key question of the hour in our corner of the vineyward.

In Jeff’s Three Laws Of Fundraising post/Fundraising Success Mag column this past week, Jeff posits the following relationship equation:

Here’s the deal: Your donors don’t support you because you’re the coolest organization on the block. They support you because they are cool. And you are just cool enough for them to consider inviting you into their circles. You are the trembling, grateful newcomer hoping to be allowed to hang out with the cool donor.

In Jeff’s relationship equation, the cool donor supports you because they are cool. And you, the trembling, grateful newcomer, are aw-shucks grateful for their vote of confidence, not to mention hopeful that they might introduce you to more of their cool friends who can support you because they’re cool, too.

That’s a far cry from our contention in Transformational Giving that the relationship between individual and nonprofit is a mutual accountability relationship, not a friendship or a support relationship. (That’sTG principle # 5, if you’re keeping score.)

We’re going to be devoting this week on the blog to talking further about the relationship between individual and nonprofit. I’ve been doing a little detective work on the subject and discovered some absolutely fascinating clues historically as to why the relationship has taken the shape it has, and how things weren’t always this way…including an early 20th century antecedent to Transformational Giving whose approach was wiped out by the rise of the modern fundraising era.

Stay tuned.

But for today we de-list Donor Power Blog from our list of recommended sites. But we do have a new site to add:

Make It Transformational–the new daily blog by the Giving and Training Officers of Mission Increase Foundation.

Take a sec to click over to this second daily TG multivitamin. I’ve previewed the posts that will appear in the blog’s inaugural week. As you read daily, you’ll see that these aren’t trembling newcomers happy that you’re cool enough to invite them to your RSS feed.

They’re mutual accountability change agents, ready to urge you on–and be urged on by you–to replace Donor Power with real Transformation.