I wanted to find another book to talk about today.  But the problem wasn’t finding a book; it was narrowing it down to just one.

So let’s hear your votes in the Comments on two things:

1. Is this Agitator Cliff Notes approach worthwhile and worth doing again?
2. What book(s) do you recommend?  Roger has sent me a list.  The DonorVoice team has weighed in. So please, add yours.

To get you started, here were the ones I was considering for the next installment with a short description (which should also serve as a decent reading recommendation list):

I’ve enjoyed all of Jon Acuff’s books so far.

Tom Ahern’s Making Money with Donor Newsletters. It’s right there on the tin.

Adam Alter’s Drunk Tank Pink. The hidden cues that change our behavior (like painting drunk tanks pink to pacify large drunk men).

Dan Ariely’s anything.  Great expertise on behavioral science and decision making.

Shane Atchinson and Jason Burby’s Does it Work?  Ways to create value in digital marketing.

Jay Baer’s Hug Your Haters (the Zen of soliciting and acting on constituent feedback) and Youtility (how to get constituents to meet your needs by meeting their needs first).

Phil Barden’s Decoded provides good insights into the decision science of why we by.

Eric Barker’s Barking Up the Wrong Tree: The Surprising Science Behind Why Everything You Know About Success Is (Mostly) Wrong.

Dave Barry’s Big Trouble.  It’s funny.

Josh Barsch’s The Google Ad Grants Playbook.  Also right here on the tin.

Anything by Ori Brafman or Nassim Taleb on how to make organizations that thrive in chaos and with messiness.

Jeff Brooks’ The Fundraiser’s Guide to Irresistible Communications.  Great for the tactics of making a communication work for you.  We don’t always agree, but that just makes for better thinking.

Penelope Burke’s Donor-Centered Fundraising. A classic.

Ken Burnett’s Relationship Fundraising.  Ditto.

Ed Catmull’s Creativity, Inc.  Lessons from Pixar and being and staying creative.

Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simon’s The Invisible Gorilla takes you through how your mind — and everyone’s minds — don’t work the way you thought they do.

Brian Christian’s Algorithms to Live By.  Understand human decisions through computer algorithms and vice versa.

Anything by Robert Cialdini about the influences on our lives and the influences we can make on others’.

Jim Collins‘ books are excellent and Good to Great and the Social Sectors is the most relevant for our work.

James Comey’s A Higher Loyalty.  Just to tick off you-know-who.  If this offends you, I meant the other you-know-who.

Daniel Coyle’s The Culture Code.  How is your culture helping reach your mission (or sabotaging that effort)?

Leslie Crutchfield and Heather McLeod Grant’s Forces for Good. If you like the Jim Collins genre, it’s that but for nonprofits.

You could be the first person in your state (and, if you don’t have states, probably in your country) to read my novel.

Tom Fishburne’s Your Ad Ignored Here.  Marketing cartoons.  Yes, really.  If you haven’t seen these, you aren’t living your best marketing life.

Any Malcolm Gladwell.

Or Seth Godin.

Or Adam Grant.

Tim Harford’s Messy: The Power of Disorder to Transform Our Lives.  Between this and Ori Brafman, you can guess what my desk looks like.

Anything by Chip and/or Dan Heath.  More behavioral science goodness.

Sasha Issenberg’s The Victory Lab.  Winning in marketing, but this time for votes in political campaigns.  A world that’s just 15 degrees or so off our own.

Either of Avinash Kaushik’s books on Web Analytics.

Beth Kanter’s The Networked Nonprofit.  Still important to figure out how important social media is to you, but when you figure out that it is, here’s the place to come.

Any Michael Lewis on profiting with zag when others zig.

William MacAskill’s Doing Good Better.  A great intro to effective altruism.  Not how all people behave, but how we might if we were Spock.

Kivi Leroux Miller’s Content Marketing for Nonprofits.  A nonprofit specific version of how to use your content to attract and retain.

Jerold Panas’s Mega Gifts.  For the major gift fundraisers and those who want to create on-ramps to major gifts.

Daniel Pink’s anything (except The Adventures of Johnny Bunko, which wasn’t for me).  Great expertise on motivation – how we motivate ourselves and others.

David Rados’ Pushing the Numbers in Marketing and Marketing for Nonprofit Organizations.  Studied with him in college and these are both great to help with numeracy.

Anything by Robert Rose and/or Joe Pulizzi.  Both visionary about where marketing is headed (content marketing) and practical in how to get there.

Adrian Sargeant’s Tiny Essentials of Donor Loyalty.  Retention espresso.

Adrian Sargeant and Jen Shang’s Fundraising Principles and Practice.  Yes, it’s a textbook.  There’s a reason we learn from these.

I’ve not yet read Tom Ahern’s and Simone Joyaux’s Keep Your Donors; nor Karen VanHuss and Otis Fulton’s Dollar Dash; nor The Science of Giving by Daniel Oppenheimer and Christopher Olivia; nor Richard Shotton’s Choice Factory, but Roger has piled his dog-eared copies on my desk along with “must read” Post-It notes.

Your thoughts?

Nick

P.S. I apologize in advance for forgetting more books than I’ve remembered.  The drawbacks and dangers of these sorts of lists.

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