Award Winning Blog - Agitator

How Asking Affects the Asked

There are some phenomena that are impossible to measure without effecting some change. Think of your tire pressure gauge – to measure the pressure in your tire, you have to let some air out, thus changing your tire’s pressure. This is so ingrained in our lives and our physics that there are times that subatomic […]

Learn More August 30, 2019

Fundraising Pioneer and Provocateur Dies

John Groman, 74, co-founder of Epsilon and a pioneer in database fundraising died August 24 in Sheldon, South Carolina. John was more than a friend. He was a feisty, driven colleague who brought new methods and new ways of viewing direct response fundraising that forever changed our sector. Beginning in 1969—almost 50 years to the […]

Learn More August 28, 2019

Missing Out: Smaller Organizations and Direct Mail

Last month we surveyed Agitator readers in an effort to answer three questions: Are smaller nonprofits taking advantage of the power of postal mail/direct mail? Do they understand its financial potential? If they do understand its potential, why aren’t they using more direct mail/postal mail? The survey answers, in a nutshell, are: Smaller organizations are not taking […]

Learn More August 26, 2019

Buy Nick’s Book

Nick has written a practical, helpful, and, yes, fun-to-read book on surviving the complex calamity of diminishing donor numbers, clogged acquisition channels and diminishing retention. It’s titled: The New Nonprofit: Six Models to Raise More Money and Accomplish More Mission. It’s just been released and is ready for your order! I’ve read the book four times […]

Learn More August 22, 2019

Donors At the Break Point

There’s a new trend in customer service – AI-assistance. Companies like Walgreens and AT&T are using your personal data to match you with the right customer services representative. And they are using something called the “break point” to walk right up to, but not over, the line where the customer will leave . They do […]

Learn More August 21, 2019

Fundraisers Abandon Ship

Not only is the nonprofit sector doing a lousy job holding on to donors, we’re apparently equally awful when it comes to retaining nonprofit fundraisers. In a recent survey conducted by The Harris Poll for The Chronicle of Philanthropyand AFP, using a self-selected sample of American and Canadian fundraisers, a whopping 51% of the respondents […]

Learn More August 19, 2019