Award Winning Blog - Agitator

The Essential Importance of First-Party Data

Nick just sounded the warning bell about the inaccuracy of third-party data. I want to follow up with a more fundamental question: Even if third-party data were more accurate, why would you want it? After all, looking at the Predictably Inaccurate study from Deloitte, when data-brokers had the data wrong and even when people found out […]

Learn More September 21, 2018

Laws, Sausages, and Third-Party Data

More and more fundraisers are falling in love with Big Data. Some use it to create “personas” in hopes of better segmenting their files. Others employ it for wealth screening and prospect research. Whatever use you make of it every data point should move your organization at least one step closer to the donor. Yet […]

Learn More September 19, 2018

The Curious Case of Kimberly Ellinger

We have a phantom member of our family. When we moved into our first house, one of the people who sold us the house was Kimberly something-or-other. We immediately started getting mail for Kimberly Ellinger – her first name, our last. Our best guess is that a mailer assumed she got either married or divorced, […]

Learn More September 17, 2018

Fundraisers I Fear: Part 2– Insufficient Knowledge of Basic Information

In Part 1 I urged all of us to become “expert novices” –fundraisers who have knowledge and confidence but are capable of maintaining a seed of doubt that they may be wrong. Of course, the building blocks of knowledge, skepticism and curiosity must be stacked on top of the rock-solid granite foundation of fundamental fact. You […]

Learn More September 14, 2018

You saw my ad where?

The violinist played for almost an hour at DC’s L’Enfant Plaza at the height of morning rush hour. He cleared $32.17. This wouldn’t be remarkable except that the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the great classical masters who can normally command up to $1000 a minute for his playing. He was playing on a […]

Learn More September 12, 2018

The Fundraisers I Fear

The fundraisers who scare me the most are the ones who are convinced they’re right. Why? Because these are the folks most unlikely to ever change. It is their blind adherence to conviction and convention that endangers the future of their organizations. Unwilling to challenge the status quo of their own efforts they’re most likely to […]

Learn More September 10, 2018