Award Winning Blog - Agitator

Why I Hate Sugarcoating Issues

I was looking for studies that had been done on what type of images are effective in nonprofit direct marketing. So I headed over to Google Scholar and searched for “use pictures fundraising appeals.” You would have thought I was searching for snuff films. Here are some of the titles of journal articles that faced […]

Learn More June 26, 2018

Rage Donations: Give Before You Explode!

Trump’s politically-inspired human rights horror show featuring state-sponsored kidnapping of refugee children and the torture-by-trauma of their imprisoned parents has triggered a tsunami of rage –and rage giving — worth noting, As was the case after the president’s announcement of the Muslim Ban and his other post-election actions, a flood of responses –financial and in-kind– […]

Learn More June 25, 2018

Pairing metrics for fun and (non)profit

On Tuesday, I talked about how Simpson’s paradox means you shouldn’t use just overall retention as a metric. Rather, you want to pair it with subgroup metrics so someone doesn’t achieve their retention goals by cutting off acquisition. I’ll generalize from that. As Newton would have said if he were a direct marketer, each metric […]

Learn More June 22, 2018

Who are your disaster donors?

We often talk about donor identities that make someone more valuable or easier to acquire, whether it’s direct connection to a disease organization, medical professionals to organizations that help sick kids, those who receive services, or many others. But what about the donor identities that make someone less valuable? Yes, they exist. And they are […]

Learn More June 21, 2018

What About People Who Don’t Answer Donor Surveys?

When you are in the business of asking donors about themselves and customizing their donor journeys based on that, you almost always get the question: “But what about those folks who don’t answer the survey?” There are couple of answers to this. The first is: keep asking. If there’s a datum that you need to […]

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Are You a Modern or Medieval Fundraiser?

Donors are changing far faster today than most of the organizations they give to. Their expectations are rising at the very moment their trust and loyalty are declining. Unfortunately, far too many nonprofits fail to understand this reality. As a result they’re woefully unprepared to cope. Few organizations understand why their donors give… few bother […]

Learn More June 20, 2018