Award Winning Blog - Agitator

What the Simpsons Can Teach Us About Retention Rate

You’ve just made a wise decision: you are investing more in both donor-focused retention efforts and new ways to bring in the right donors for your program. Surely, your file will grow and your retention rate will increase. But when you look at the stats a year later, your file has grown. But your retention […]

Learn More June 19, 2018

Listening to the Wrong Donors

Jeff Brooks recently posted his 5th Law of Fundraising, which is “The more effective the fundraising campaign, the more complaints it will generate.” If this dictum were the law of gravity, I would have floated away. Some of my most effective campaigns have come in with donor notes that complimented the communication – a rarity. […]

Learn More June 18, 2018

Get Your Millennial Audience Off My Lawn, Part 2

Back in January, I argued that generations were a flawed construct and demographics a poor way to segment. In particular, the Millennial mythos seemed a mix of wishful thinking and harrumphing from previous generations. But since I posted that, there have enough “Millennials are doing X” think pieces (using the term “think” loosely) that it’s […]

Learn More June 15, 2018

The risks of cut-and-paste

Our fearless leader, Kevin Schulman, was on the Raise + Engage podcast with Steve MacLaughlin of Blackbaud last week. Listening to the episode (there doesn’t seem to be an audio option on the page, but I’m assuming you can find a podcast), one thing that struck me was Kevin’s statement “There ought to be massive […]

Learn More June 14, 2018

The New PayPal: Touchless Transactions

70% of UK charities reported a decrease in their cash donations over the past three years. What’s going on? Have we Brits stopping caring about causes? No, but we’re carrying less cash. The government is estimating that by 2026 only 21% of all financial transactions will be in cash, down from over 60% in 2006. […]

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Google Gives a Gift Horse

Back in January, I talked about how Facebook set up donation processing for nonprofits. I’d largely advised not using the service, because Facebook controls the donor and the donor relationship. And there’s news! No, silly; it’s not that Facebook has rethought its policy and is giving us more donor data. When there is a sentence […]

Learn More June 13, 2018