Award Winning Blog - Agitator

TEST RESULTS: Donors Care About Their Impact, Not Your Overhead

A significant factor in the donor’s decision to give rests in how s/he answers the question, “how am I going to feel if I make this gift?” So, the job of the fundraiser is to determine how those factors under an organization’s control can be most effectively presented. One major set of issues involve those […]

Learn More August 20, 2018

Mirror, Mirror On The Wall, What’s The Best Mindset of Them All

Some fundraisers believe that donors are born the way they are and little can be done to change them. Others believe that valuable and committed donors aren’t born that way; they have to be created. My experience is that these beliefs are often a mirror reflection of the fundraisers themselves. The “donors are born that […]

Learn More August 17, 2018

When do donors lapse?

Back in May, I argued that you haven’t really acquired a donor until they’ve given permission, information, and/or a second gift. Let’s look at the end of a donor lifecycle – the moment they lapse. That one is easy, you say. We have a business rule that says someone is lapsed after they haven’t given […]

Learn More August 16, 2018

WoW

Soon we’ll enter the “crank-up-for-year-end-giving-and-2019- acquisition -efforts” phase of the year and we’ll have lots to say about key elements of all that. However, let’s not forget that behind all the research, advice, commenting and debate the Agitatorand our readers engage in we’re all participants in a shared and fundamental mission: changing the world. Making […]

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Awareness Versus Impact: Which Do Donors Choose?

Does raising awareness sell? That is, do people want to donate money to raise awareness about an issue or organization? Or do they want to fund efforts to remediate wrongs directly? Robert Smith and Norbert Schwarz wanted to find out. Actually, being good scientists, they wanted to analyze donor’s metacognition about awareness activities vis-à-vis whether […]

Learn More August 15, 2018

EMAIL: The King of the Digital Hill

Email – not Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other social media platforms—remains King of the Hill when it comes to driving online advocacy action and contributions. That’s the key nugget delivered to nonprofit news and public media organizations by Jesse Littlewood, a campaigner and digital strategist who’s helped build Common Cause’s impressive digital advocacy and fundraising […]

Learn More August 14, 2018