Award Winning Blog - Agitator

The Right Kind of Donor Motivation

Emotionally manipulative messages can backfire because of psychological reactance, that rebellious response people sometimes show when they feel unduly pressured. They may still give in the moment but your donor retention hinges on your ability to create a sense of autonomy in your donors. But how to do that? And can it be measured and […]

Learn More May 6, 2020

Beware of Psychological Reactance

“Tug on donors’ heartstrings…” “Make them feel pain and sorrow… “ “Guilt them into giving…” “We want donors to feel like giving will bring them closer to God’s heart…” “The quickest route to connection is fear and pain…” “By giving, donors will get relief from their emotional discomfort…” If statements like these characterize your approach […]

Learn More May 4, 2020

An Old New Way of Fundraising

(a.k.a. the redemption of telephone fundraising) Now that Covid-19’s forced us all out of face-face fundraising there’s been a rush to pick up the phone again. It makes sense; the similarities between face-to-face channels and voice-to-voice vastly outweigh the differences. If you can’t talk about why your mission matters on the street, in the mall […]

Learn More May 1, 2020

“The Best Way to Predict the Future Is To Create It.

Who knows whether this pandemic will produce a merely difficult or a truly dreadful future for fundraising. Will the surprisingly strong results many organizations are currently experiencing continue or will they drastically diminish as the economic meltdown predicted by most experts ensues? There’re a hundred variations of this question. At this stage there are no […]

Learn More April 29, 2020

M+R 2020 Online Benchmarks Released

On April 23d, the day the Covid-19 death count reached 50,000 in the U.S., M+R published its 2020 Online Benchmarks. [ You can also find an online session M+R did with NTEN on the study here. ] Although the data were collected before the coronavirus outbreak and the massive tumult and tragedy that’s followed, this […]

Learn More April 27, 2020

How to Get Your Share of the NEW PPP Money

Congress has passed and the president has signaled he’ll sign into law the legislation that makes an additional $321 billion available to small businesses and charities. We offer up some practical suggestions to perhaps help Agitator readers increase your chances of getting money. Because, as it turns out, the money does not flow based on […]

Learn More April 24, 2020