Award Winning Blog - Agitator

Revenge of the Branders

In London earlier this week Adrian Sargeant and Alan Clayton publicly presented the findings of their report Brand and Great Fundraising: Help or Hindrance? Here’s a summary of the Report’s findings that The Agitator shared with its readers: Spending on a charity’s brand is most effective when it is used to support fundraising. Fundraising expenditure […]

Learn More September 13, 2019

I Hold You In Contempt!

It is one thing to have contempt for your donors and constituents. It’s another to show them you have contempt for them. The former isn’t recommended (see: every previous Agitator post); the latter is fatal. People fear executives and board members because they can fire you. Donors can fire executives and board members by not giving. […]

Learn More September 11, 2019

Latest Survey on Why Donors Give

The new DonorGraphics study is out from One & All and it’s full of interesting data on stated donor preferences. One of the survey questions asked donors what is their main reason for giving charitably.. Possible responses were: To address/impact needs in my local community To address/impact needs worldwide To fund organizations that enrich my […]

Learn More September 9, 2019

Neglected Treasure

Nick’s post on How Asking Affects the Askedemphasized the importance of requesting feedback directly from the donor and explains why that feedback is so important and so valuable. There’s another form of feedback and I’m afraid in our highly automated, often impersonal processes it’s been lost: the comments donors write on their response forms or […]

Learn More September 6, 2019

Board Meeting Bingo

In various conversations at Bridge and ANA conference recently, there was an undercurrent across organizations and fundraisers: my board won’t let me do X because Y. Or, conversely, my board is insisting we do Z despite my protestations. The person saying this is often a seasoned development professional, respected by their peers but not as […]

Learn More September 4, 2019

Hurricane Dorian and the Season Ahead

From Hurricane Katrina in 2005 to this year’s Hurricane Dorian The Agitator follows fundraising fallout from major storms and natural disasters. As I write this early in the morning of the U.S. Labor Day the path of Dorian is still uncertain. What is for sure is that this is a big (huge) storm and holds the […]

Learn More September 2, 2019