Award Winning Blog - Agitator

Are Your Ads Swimming in a Sea of Sameness or a Vibrant OCEAN?

People are different in their motivation and interests and yet the sea of sameness of one-size-fits-all fundraising dominates. The Control ad and a Test ad both going to a single audience; the unspoken assumption is that everyone’s the same. But what if the test failed because it did well with some people but poorly with […]

Learn More April 9, 2021

Preventing Donor “Never Events” by Focusing on “Always Events”

“Happy families are all alike; every happy family is unhappy in its own way.” That’s the opening line from Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina and one of the most famous openings to a novel in all of literature. A solid statement; even though a bit grim. Tolstoy went on to examine relationships in 19th century Russia. He devoted […]

Learn More April 7, 2021

Donor Service – Human vs. Machine

Walgreens and AT&T are using your personal data to match you with the right customer service representative. And they are using something called the “break point” to walk right up to, but not over, the line where the customer will leave. They do this through analysis of tone and pace of speech. It’s only at […]

Learn More April 5, 2021

“We Grow Too Soon Old, and Too Late Smart”

That Dutch proverb popped into my head as I read our friend Erica Waasdorp’s piece Is the Interest in Recurring Giving Really Growing? It’s not just because Erica is Dutch, nor because she’s an expert in monthly giving. It’s because her reading of the just-released Nonprofit Pro’s 2021 Nonprofit Leadership Impact Study correctly raises […]

Learn More April 2, 2021

Behavioral Design Lab: Fixing your donate page abandon rate

Most people – 8 out of 10 – who make it to your donation page don’t donate. You’re losing 80% of your potential donations. Why? Do we really think people stopped caring between the decision and the action? They lost their motivation, that much is clear. But where did it go? The fuel of motivation […]

Learn More March 31, 2021

F2F – More Bees with Honey (and stings too)

Face-to -face fundraising is a tough business, full of rejection. Although your direct mail appeal gets rejected at an even higher rate (unopened, non-response) it’s less personal, less in your face (literally). Fundraisers need to be resilient. If you can’t handle rejection, you can’t handle the gig. As a relevant aside, DVCanvass (our F2F and […]

Learn More March 29, 2021