Award Winning Blog - Agitator

Emotional Contagion in Social

Emotional contagion is the phenomenon of humans feeling and expressing emotions similar to those around them. This effect can be triggered by face to face conversations, videos, movies, photographs and even music. Sad begets sad, happy begets happy and angry begets angry. An analysis of Facebook charity posts from the 100 largest US charities shows […]

Learn More December 15, 2021

3 Lasting Gifts Under $2 for Your Donors

From monthly Apples and Pears to Zoo gift memberships my postal and digital mailboxes are filled with last minute tips for holiday gift giving. All of which got me thinking about gifts every fundraiser should be giving their donors. I’m not talking about calendars or stuffed animals or tote bags. Rather consider these essential gifts […]

Learn More December 13, 2021

Everybody Has Got a Story

Is there a more overused word than ‘narrative’ these days? I’ve tried to remove it from my vocabulary. Story is simpler anyway. So much of fundraising has no story. This isn’t conjecture. We’ve scored hundreds of pieces of copy and the Story Score (per Copy Optimizer) is dreadful and most often it’s not because the […]

Learn More December 10, 2021

The Uniqueness of Generations?

In an Agitator rarity, we give you the unabridged post of another, Bob Hoffman, whose profaneness is outdone only by an Agitator editor (or two). Enough said, here’s Bob. One of the great idiocies of the marketing industry is the belief in the uniqueness of generations — Gen X is this…Millennials are that…Baby Boomers are […]

Learn More December 8, 2021

Helping the Cobbler’s Kids Get Shoes

The International Fundraising Congress (IFC) is in a financial pinch or worse. It’s main economic engine, a well regarded, in-person conference has been shelved for two years running and times are tough. They’re doing what all fundraisers do, fundraise. The seeming irony is the appeal seems awfully organization centric, not particularly personal and missing a […]

Learn More December 6, 2021

Solicitation Volume and Overhead Ratios

Most relationships are messy and involved. This applies to two people as much as it applies to two data points. The relationship is rarely linear and always up and to the right. Underneath those two data points are a myriad of other data points and beneath them, human beings such as donors and those working […]

Learn More December 3, 2021