Award Winning Blog - Agitator

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

“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