Award Winning Blog - Agitator

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

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