Let's start there.
What later became known to customer-service experts in the nonprofit world as "donor centricity" began as a theory proposed by one of the giants of direct-response fundraising: the UK's Ken Burnett.
In 1992 he published his call-to-arms classic, Relationship Fundraising: A Donor-Based Approach to the Business of Raising Money.
It was a manifesto (hefty, though; at 300+ pages) ... and a futurist's warning to nonprofits that depended on "donor support."
By the time Ken published, Burnett Associates had roared for almost a decade. It was a charity money machine! The legendary George Smith at his peak, author of Asking Properly, was a staff copywriter. If any agency on earth was doing direct-response fundraising RIGHT, it was Burnett Associates.
Yet in 1992 Ken admitted his "growing unease" with "the direct marketing explosion in fundraising." Why? Because the ever-increasing volume and transactional nature of direct mail (and within the next decade: email) "is leaving a sour taste in the mouths of many of the donors I meet."