Award Winning Blog - Agitator

When Asking for Money Makes People Stop Doing Good Things

Swedes are world-class recyclers, nearly 90% of bottles and cans get returned. It’s a habit and point of civic pride. Then researchers added one small twist to the recycling machines: “Press here to get your deposit.”“Or press here to donate it to charity.” And the moment that donation choice appeared, recycling dropped and the drop persisted. […]

Learn More May 6, 2026

The Manager Tax

A researcher at Strange Loop Canon ran an AI experiment with 15 tasks and three setups. An LLM model working alone. A “manager” model that split the work and delegated to AI specialist agents. And a market where models bid for the job and the best bid won. The manager cost four times more than […]

Learn More May 4, 2026

Engagement Is a Junk Drawer

The jangle fallacy is the assumption that two similar or identical things must be different because they wear different labels. Old wine in new bottles. Psychology coined the term, and psychology is where it does the most damage. A few of my favorites: Grit. In high school my kids were assigned the Duckworth book. Grit […]

Learn More May 1, 2026

When Authenticity Gets Lost In The Mail

I get it, you want engagement and donors to feel heard. And someone, somewhere convinced you that a faux-official looking survey with a registration number and a barcode was the way to do it. The only rub? Your donors aren’t idiots. We ran a study looking at donor reactions to these “surveys”. You know the […]

Learn More April 29, 2026

The M+R Benchmarks Are In. The Numbers Are Whispering Something Most Fundraisers Don’t Want to Hear.

There’s a moment in every M+R Benchmarks Study when the room goes quiet. Not because the data is shocking, but because it confirms what many already know—and haven’t acted on. This year’s M+R Report doesn’t scream. It sighs. Growth… but bring a microscope Online revenue is up—sometimes sharply, depending on the slice of the data […]

Learn More April 27, 2026

From Your CFO Upon Discovering ROAS

Memorandum To: The Board From: The CFO Re: Capital allocation opportunity Classification: Time-sensitive Per the industry’s most-cited annual benchmark study, paid search advertising currently returns $2.48 in revenue for every $1.00 of spend. This is a documented figure, widely distributed and cited in conference keynotes. We recommend an immediate and substantial increase in paid […]

Learn More April 24, 2026