Award Winning Blog - Agitator

You Can’t Change the World From Under Your Desk

Let’s say you’re Bob Iger, CEO of the Walt Disney Company and owner of the ABC television network. You’ve helmed one of the most powerful media companies in the world. You’ve gone toe-to-toe with Trump on the Muslim ban, walked away from his President’s Advisory Council over Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accords, and […]

Learn More September 24, 2025

The Fundraiser’s Phone Ban

We love tidy levers. Teens are anxious, so ban phones. Revenue is flat, so send more appeals. If the dashboard blips, we pat ourselves on the back. If it doesn’t, we reach for the same lever again. Reality is not that simple. Take the SMART Schools study in The Lancet. Thirty English secondary schools, 1,227 […]

Learn More September 22, 2025

Free Speech Without Courage Is…

Jimmy Kimmel didn’t get frogmarched off stage. No riot cops kicked in the studio lights. He wasn’t arrested, sued, or sanctioned. That would’ve been too obvious. Instead, they just took away the audience. Nexstar, a media monopoly in heat for a $6.2 billion merger, decided Jimmy Kimmel Live! wouldn’t air “for the foreseeable future.” Why? […]

Learn More September 19, 2025

Year-End Appeals Are Never Routine When The Republic Is At Stake

I’ve been digging through advocacy copy I wrote in the early 1970s, when the country was in upheaval. Not exactly like today, but a frighteningly similar era of turmoil, media spectacle, and debates about victimhood and radicalization. Back then, we witnessed a series of violent confrontations between government forces and protesters, prisoners, and activists. The […]

Learn More September 17, 2025

Your Appeal Calendar vs. Human Time

On a spreadsheet, every house-file mailing that clears “revenue > cost” looks like a win. Under scrutiny, a lot of that “win” evaporates. In two large field experiments, simply telling donors to expect another campaign later reduced current giving. The control condition raised about 60% more than letters that primed for future asks, and the […]

Learn More September 15, 2025

Snake Oil, Plain Tofu, and the Broken Compass of Fundraising

It never fails. Every few years some bright-eyed consultant with a PowerPoint addiction announces they’ve cracked the code on donors. Not by, say, asking donors what they care about. Not by measuring what they actually do. No, no—by asking if they’ve ever used a rotary phone, or sent a postcard, or listened to music on […]

Learn More September 12, 2025