Award Winning Blog - Agitator

Evolving Our Nonprofit Language

When something new comes along, it goes through fuzzy stages of naming: We don’t know what to call it. Early names for our wired digital experience were “information superhighway” (peaked in 1996, according to Google nGram) and “cyberspace” (peaked in 2000). Early references to the car/automobile included autokenetic, autometon, buggyaut, motorig, and truckle. We define […]

Learn More October 23, 2019

Here’s To The Crazy Ones

The Asch conformity experiment is famous enough to have its own Wikipedia page. Students were asked which of three lines matched a fourth line in length. Super simple – less than one percent error rate. Until you put the student with a group of fellow students (actually actors) all saying the wrong answer. Then, 75% […]

Learn More October 21, 2019

Online Symposium Part 3: What did we learn about empathy?

Remember the last time you were with a loved one who was feeling sad or hopeless? Most likely, you also felt a bit sad, in other words, you empathized with them. But did you know there are two different forms of empathy? Emotional (affective) empathy is all about sharing another person’s feelings and building an […]

Learn More October 18, 2019

Online Symposium Part 2: What We Learned About Actual Impact

There are two types of impact information a charity could share: Actual impact is the difference a donation, or the charity, had on the cause and can be shown with data from the field. Perceived impact is the difference supporters perceive their donation, or the charity, could have e.g. $15 could buy medicine. In my previous post on […]

Learn More October 16, 2019

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