Award Winning Blog - Agitator

What Impact Messaging Works Best? The Goldilocks Finding

One of humanity’s basic psychological needs is a sense of competence or efficacy. Putting time in on something, feeling like you suck at it and are getting no better, and then receiving no feedback or negative feedback undermines your motivation to keep doing it. This includes charitable giving. The donor’s sense of competence and efficacy […]

Learn More July 27, 2020

The World’s Greatest Fundraising Letter, Made Better

Ok, maybe not the greatest, but one of the greatest according to Denny Hatch, who built a business collecting, analyzing and reporting on decades of direct mail controls called “Who’s Mailing What?”. You’ll find the full and fascinating story on this letter, its author and a great lesson in crisis management in the Denny Hatch […]

Learn More July 24, 2020

Donor Acquisition in the Pandemic

In the midst of the economic uncertainty around the pandemic my guess is there will more than the usual furor over “high costs of fundraising” and spending money on acquisition on the part of boards, CFOs and CEOs. One thing won’t change: the discussion and debate will stem mostly from ignorance Ignorance about what “acquisition” […]

Learn More July 22, 2020

Is the Donor Missing From Your Giving Equation…And Your Fundraising?

Stick with this post. By the end –following a somewhat wonky start –you’ll feel more control over your fundraising and relatedness to your donors. This is what the vast majority of giving formulas, albeit never expressed, look like: Giving = solicitation + random error (difference between your budgeted number and reality) (Remember algebra? Don’t stop reading; […]

Learn More July 20, 2020

Just Gimme Your Money

Kevin’s post on Getting Your Copy from Good to Better focuses on improving and optimizing direct response copy—generally understood by most fundraisers as the body copy of a direct mail letter or a digital appeal. Today’s post spotlights the most neglected—yet in many ways the most valuable—part of a fundraising appeal: The Response Form. Know […]

Learn More July 17, 2020

Getting Your Copy from Good to Great (or at least Better)

I was thumbing through a canary yellow, three ring binder, found while Covid cleaning. It had that musty paper smell and more than a few cobwebs. This book in binder is, 86 tutorials on Creating Fundraising Letters and Packages, and the author is Jerry Huntsinger, who we’ve brought in on a client gig or two […]

Learn More July 15, 2020