Award Winning Blog - Agitator

The Middle Is Crowded

In 1929, economist Harold Hotelling described the “principle of minimum differentiation.” Competing stores, given the same information and the same incentives, rationally locate next to each other. If customers are spread along a street, the profit-maximizing position is the center. The goal is to minimize average distance to the largest number of buyers. Picture a […]

Learn More March 9, 2026

Why Your Best Copy Starts With Silence

George Orwell wrote “Politics and the English Language” in 1946. One line from it should hang over every fundraising shop in the country: “Probably it is better to put off using words as long as possible and get one’s meaning as clear as one can through pictures and sensations. Afterward one can choose — not […]

Learn More March 6, 2026

The Unit of Strategy Is the Unit of Reporting

I argued here that strategy shows up in allocation. You can say “personalization” all day, but if the budget is still a campaign calendar with channel line items, campaigns are the strategic unit and everything else is garnish. The follow-on problem is reporting, which teaches the organization what counts. If you budget by campaign and […]

Learn More March 4, 2026

A Tale Of Two Charts (ok, it’s 4)

Which chart would you rather show your CEO, finance chief, or Board? Chart 1 or Chart 2? “` The answer is obvious and paradoxically, revealing, showcasing our innate desire to avoid thought of loss. The rub is that both charts use the exact same data, one shows donors acquired and retained, the other shows donors […]

Learn More March 2, 2026

We Said “Donor First.” The Budget Said “Same as Last Year.”

Henry Mintzberg is not a fundraiser. He’s one of the most cited management thinkers of the past 50 years, and the author of The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning. His most durable idea is simple: there is deliberate strategy, what leaders intend, and there is emergent strategy, the pattern that actually materializes from decisions […]

Learn More February 27, 2026

Behavioral Ruts Beat Brilliant Campaigns

For years, Domino’s believed it was in the transportation business. They spent a lot of operational time and money on speed, routing and driver density. Everything revolved around getting a box from oven to doorstep faster than the other guy. Then fees rose, tipping fatigue set in, inflation crept up and customers turned carryout into […]

Learn More February 25, 2026