Award Winning Blog - Agitator

Constantly Mailing Your ‘Best’ Donors Can Make Them Your ‘Worst’

It is inarguable that increasing the number of mailings increases current demand/responses. Send out more mail, get more demand/responses. But, this decision making behind “mail more, make more” lives in the short-term. We estimate the probability (usually crudely with RFM business rules) that a donor will give and then include them or not. Because the selection […]

Learn More June 8, 2020

American Renewal

One of the great advantages of older age is that experience seen in life’s rear-view mirror often provides a helpful understanding of what’s happening as seen through the front windshield of today. What I see today, while deeply disturbing in so many ways, gives me great hope. This is especially true where citizen action and […]

Learn More June 5, 2020

It’s Way Past Time to Raise the Donor-Centric Bar

Why is the norm in which most nonprofits operate based on a premise nobody believes: every donor is the same. Yet, this false premise often serves as the very cornerstone of our work. For example, we run A/B tests with the ‘gold’ standard being met when the test and control group audiences are the same […]

Learn More June 3, 2020

Calculating the Risk of Failure

As the combined horrors of major crisis within major crisis within major crisis piled up last week there was one moment of elation. The triumphant launch of SpaceX’s Dragon and its successful rendezvous with the International Space Station. In the course of the cable news runup to the launch Brian Williams of MSNBC interviewed retired […]

Learn More June 1, 2020

Your Story, Well Told

She had spent days thinking, drafting, re-drafting. No computer at first, pencil and a pad, old school. The crumbled paper spilled from her wastebasket and the candle burned at both ends. Coffee mornings, wine evenings. Digital drafts counted the dozens. Mark Twain adages rumbled in her head, “I apologize for such a long letter – […]

Learn More May 29, 2020

What Covid-19 Relief is Your Nonprofit Receiving? A Checklist of Opportunities

In “We’re All In This Together” is Horseshit” I castigated some consumer companies for their disingenuous and near-universal language proclaiming their shared concern with us while pressing their under-paid and under-protected “essential” employees to serve those of us privileged enough to be safe at home. To be fair, I did see some advertising from insurance companies, […]

Learn More May 26, 2020