Award Winning Blog - Agitator

Refuse the Miracle. Accept the Work.

I’ve read most of the AI-and-fundraising books, white papers and blogs published in the last two years. A depressing number of them are brochures with page numbers — breathless, vendor-adjacent, promising that a chatbot will rescue a donor file nobody bothered to clean. They sell the miracle and skip the work. Steve MacLaughlin’s just-published AI […]

Learn More July 10, 2026

The Fundraising Problem Hiding Inside a Turtle

Would you be more willing to help the spotted owl if the solution saved 10% of its habitat or 50%? Randomized experiments suggest it doesn’t matter much. Now swap out the spotted owl for reptiles and support goes down. Swap in turtles instead of lizards and support goes back up. Your $.50 Scrabble word for […]

Learn More July 8, 2026

Stop Asking for Innovation Then Grading It Like Yesterday’s Mail Plan

“We want creative and innovative ideas.” What tends to accompany this request, though unsaid, is “as long as they feel familiar, fit our current process and come with a track record of success.” This is innovation ordered off the kid’s menu – new idea, but hold the new. The unsaid part reveals itself subconciously through […]

Learn More July 6, 2026

Happy Independence Day

Roger and Kevin

Learn More July 3, 2026

You Can Educate Donors Right Out of Giving

Donors give, and keep giving, when they feel clear enough and confident enough to say yes. Our job is to have the donor feel like they get it. “It” being the gist of the problem, what you do about it, how their money fits and what happens next. What they don’t need is your full […]

Learn More July 1, 2026

When Best Practice Becomes a Bad Habit

“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” I always attributed that line to Mark Twain. The internet is less sure, which is fitting since I would have bet the house on Twain in the Jeopardy category of “Quotes Everyone Misattributes With […]

Learn More June 29, 2026