Award Winning Blog - Agitator

Double Good News

Good news. In fact, I bring you DOUBLE GOOD NEWS. ONE. Just as he did 30 years ago with his revolutionary Relationship Fundraising: A Donor-Based Approach to the Business of Raising Money, Ken Burnett has once again delivered a wealth of advice. This time in the form of advice-by-classic examples. Ken’s new book The essence […]

Learn More May 21, 2021

Seize This Moment

The M+R 2021 Benchmark Study is now out. And it’s a winner. In fact, it carries news of lots of winners in the pandemic year of 2020. I hope you’ll read the entire report packed with charts and editorial insightful commentary covering digital advertising , email messaging, text messaging and peer to peer, email metrics, […]

Learn More May 19, 2021

Easier is Better

Easy things make brains happy. Happy brains do the things we ask them to (like donate). The easier something is, the more it convinces. Simple stocks go up more; simple named people become president. We often forget this. So here’s a simple post about keeping it simple. (The hard data are in links.) Image credit: Boston […]

Learn More May 17, 2021

“Just One Damn Thing After Another.”

The headline quotation, attributed to British historian Arnold Toynbee, pretty much summarizes the worst approach to teaching or slearning history. Lists of battle. Names of great men. “Just one damn thing after another.” In fact, to seriously study history rather than memorize lists, is to look into causes of and relationships between people and events. […]

Learn More May 14, 2021

The Double Problem of Local Optimization

It’s tempting to say every improvement is a win. Perhaps you got an extra three percent on the response rate or the average gift nudged up. The important question to ask when judging improvement is what goal are you optimizing toward? Let’s say your goal is to climb the highest mountain. To reach that goal […]

Learn More May 12, 2021

The Strength of Knowing What We Don’t Know

Kevin’s moving tribute to his father noted two essential traits for greatness in any profession –including fundraising: “He had a voracious appetite as a learner. As smart as he was, his greatest strength was his humility in knowing the vastness of what he didn’t know.” We all need to work harder at harnessing the immense […]

Learn More May 10, 2021