Award-Winning Blog


How Donor Opinion Can Steer You Right

Yesterday’s post ccataloged a multitude of reasons surveys and donor listening could steer you wrong. That said, there are many things we must ask donors that are both easy to answer accurately and vital for us to know: How easy was the online donation process? How committed are you to the organization? Are you a […]

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Your A/B test winner may be losing money

It was an A/B test winner.  The Bavarian State Opera had a fundraising ask post-online-ticket purchase.  They found if they forced ticket purchasers to state either “I have donated already” or “No, thank you” to bypass this ask, response rate went up one percentage point and average gift increased by $.46. Increased average gift and […]

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Why Donor Opinions Could Steer You Wrong

It’s not their fault; it could be yours. On Monday, Roger talked about the multitude of sins committed in the Charity Commission report. Among them was the flawed approach of asking people why they thought what they thought. Today, I wanted to explain why it’s so difficult to get people’s opinions of their opinions.  Tomorrow, […]

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Your Gift of 16 Minutes

Adrian Sargeant and his crew at the Philanthropy Centre need 16 minutes of your help. Here’s why. They’re undertaking a major study on how best to measure an organiztion’s “philanthropic orientation.”  The end product will be a simple questionnaire that you and other organizations can put to work to determine what steps they need to take […]

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Finding the Pony in the Charity Commission Report

  Didja hear the one about the two kids:  one an extreme pessimist, the other an extreme optimist? The parents took the pessimist to a room full of brand-new toys, and the optimist out to a manure pile. When they checked in on the pessimist, he was crying.  He wouldn’t play with any of the […]

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See Ya Later, Regulator

  We know that trust in nonprofits is waning. You can see it in the Edelman Trust Barometer that we talked about in February, along with the reasons why trust is important to fundraising. And last week, the Charity Commission in the UK came out with similar results, showing a drop in trust for UK […]

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