Award Winning Blog - Agitator

Online Symposium Part 1: What We Learned About Perceived Impact

It’s not a big scientific discovery that supporters care about the difference they make. If my donation won’t change anything, why would I give? At the same time though, very few supporters check a charity’s actual impact before making a donation. So, what’s going on here? Two things: 1. The type of impact Actual impact is […]

Learn More October 14, 2019

The Power of Celebrity (or lack thereof)

in our board meeting bingo run-through of the things you don’t want to hear your board say, I forgot “let’s reach out to X celebrity to see if they will market for us.” (Extra bonus points if X is Oprah.) It comes up frequently. And it’s painful to have to say “yes, it would be great […]

Learn More October 11, 2019

“Smug” Is A Four-Letter Word

We talk about falling retention rates when the reports from the Blackbaud Institute Index or the Fundraising Effectiveness Project (FEP) is released each quarter. We don’t talk about how many poor fundraising practices contributed to that decline. We talk about the declining overall number of donors, not how fundraising malpractice contributed to the failure to […]

Learn More October 9, 2019

Testing Goes To Pot

Last year, the Journal of the American Medical Association for Internal Medicine published a blockbuster finding – April 20th has a 12% elevated fatal crash risk, which is statistically significant. This doesn’t sound like a blockbuster finding until you factor in that April 20 is also a very unofficial holiday for using marijuana. The authors […]

Learn More October 7, 2019

Head-in-the-Sand Is Not a Donor-Centric Strategy

A year ago I wrote: “ I don’t know exactly when it will happen. In the not-too-distant future your organization will receive a letter from a donor that goes something like this: Dear ABC Organization, I’m growing increasingly concerned over the widespread use and abuse of my private and personal information by organizations like Facebook, Google […]

Learn More October 4, 2019

Shelter from the Privacy Storm

On Monday, Roger talked about the looming storm clouds of California Consumer Protection Act (CCPA.) This new act likely to portend a cluster… munition… for a few reasons: Even before the CCPA takes effect on January 1, 2020, there’s already a push to hold a new California referendum calling for even greater regulation. This on […]

Learn More October 2, 2019