Award-Winning Blog


Are You Acquiring Donors or Training Tippers?

Premiums work and that is the worst thing about them. Anyone who has spent time around direct mail knows the evidence.  Labels lift response. Calendars lift response. Stickers, socks, tote bags, seed packets, greeting cards, nickels glued to paper like tiny bribes. They can all lift response. So the anti-premium argument can’t, “these things never […]

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The Failed Ask That Raised Money

The “R” word is put in strategy decks, conference sessions, CRM fields, and donor journey maps with arrows pointing toward enlightenment.  Then we measure the Relationship like a vending machine. Did the donor say yes today?  If yes, success. If no, failure.  That’s awfully binary and myopic. Case in point, giving rose by almost 7% in […]

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Avocados and Fundraising

The miracle of avocado toast is not the avocado. Thirty years ago, Americans were not buying avocados year-round in every grocery store from San Diego to Scranton. Mexican avocados were effectively kept out of the U.S. market for most of the twentieth century, with pest risk as the official reason and California growers having every […]

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When the Image Becomes the Ask

A set of experiments for a medical charity found people were more likely to choose campaigns with, Images showing visible illness and Group images instead of a single person. You probably think the first finding is akin to water being wet and are dubious of the 2nd one.  In both cases, the useful part is […]

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Same Cause, Different Morality

Most fundraising appeals are written as if the moral case is obvious because, to the organization, it probably is. Here is the child, family, animal, veteran, patient, forest, student, or cause in need. Here is the donate button. Proceed directly to generosity. But that skips the part where the donor has to decide what kind […]

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The Donor Hunger Games: May the Highest RFM Score Win

If people gave because we asked, one-size-fits-all fundraising would be the smartest system ever invented. Put the same appeals on the same calendar and dial up your activity to see generosity roll in.  The orginal sin is believing or at least behaving as if you belive asking = getting. Fundraising has two jobs: what we say […]

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