Award Winning Blog - Agitator

Just Released: Blackbaud Institute’s 2019 Charitable Giving Report

The Blackbaud Institute has just released The 2019 Charitable Giving Report . It is not only vastly improved over previous editions but sounds an optimistic note in the cacophony of fundraising prognostications that often sound more like a dirge than a paen to progress. This year’s Report includes giving data from 8,210 nonprofit organizations representing […]

Learn More February 24, 2020

Monthly Giving: How’s Your Organization Doing?

There’s a chapter in my book Retention Fundraising devoted to “Five Easy Retention Wins.” Among the top 5 actions that will improve retention is Monthly Giving. By whatever name –monthly giving, recurring giving, sustainer giving—almost every organization, regardless of size, should already have, or at least should have plans to immediately launch a monthly giving […]

Learn More February 21, 2020

Cluster Analysis or Cluster F***k?

Don’t shoot the profane messenger. If you ever think about or talk about or actually perform donor segmentation, you’ll want to read this post about a statistical technique called cluster analysis. It is time to sound a warning bell for what might be a largely unnoticed, but no less severe, epidemic of shoddy cluster analysis […]

Learn More February 19, 2020

John Haydon (1967-2020): The Courage to Continue

John Haydon, 53, beloved and inspirational fundraising missionary, teacher and coach is dead. A familiar and enthusiastic presence at conferences and online, John offered practical and always-helpful advice and insights on digital marketing and fundraising. From improving a website to making the most of monthly giving and everything in between he never lost focus on […]

Learn More February 17, 2020

The Zero Party Future is Already Here – Proof.

Canvassing is the number one method for acquiring sustainers (according to Target benchmarking). There is a lot of money being spent and a lot of donor loss occurring, especially in the first few months. What to do about it? A lot of forward-thinking brands (e.g. TNC, ACLU, No Kid Hungry, Special Olympics) have been using […]

Learn More February 14, 2020

“Zero Party” Data is the Best Party Data

To recap our previous post, zero-party data draws a distinction between first party data (i.e. data you have based on direct interaction with your supporters) that is voluntarily, willingly shared and that which is passively and (often) unknowingly collected. The latter requires inference and assumption, the former is knowing and understanding. There are three types […]

Learn More February 12, 2020