Award-Winning Blog


Consent Dies in Your Inbox. But There’s Hope.

Let me guess. This month, your inbox looks more or less like mine below. Your turn to guess. How many of these did I give my consent to? How many did I read or even open? My work relates closely to GDPR. Yet I didn’t bother with any of these. As a sector we’ve been […]

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Say, who’s the barber here?

There’s a great 1977 Saturday Night Live skit with Steve Martin (transcript here; video here) called Theodoric of York, Medieval Barber.  The basic joke of the skit is that regardless of the malady his patient suffers from, Theodoric bleeds the patient (even if the condition is that s/he has been bled too much).  When questioned, […]

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Agitator Cliff Notes: “Hacking Marketing”

This time, I’m going with a non-fundraising book: Hacking Marketing  by Scott Brinker of Chief Marketing Technologist fame. The idea is how to take the lessons from the agile software development movement and apply them to more traditional marketing. In the book, Scott espouses agile marketing values of: Individuals and interactions over processes and tools Responding to […]

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Agitator Cliff Notes: “The Why Axis”

Next up is The Why Axis, by Uri Gneezy and John List, two of the community of economists who work on charitable giving. Roger had already covered one item I had noted back in 2013: that 1:1 matches work just as well as 2:1 or 3:1 matches.  And I talked about how people give more […]

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Agitator Cliff Notes: “Data Driven Nonprofits”

I have a confession to make. I still dog-ear pages. Yes, this goes against my former-library-employee training.  No, I don’t leave books open so it breaks their poor spine; I’m not a total monster.  Yes, I know I can take pictures of the pages and put them on Evernote or Pocket now.  Yes, I can […]

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Can Your Monthly Donors Be Held Hostage?

If you care about the future of your monthly giving program I urge you to take 2 minutes and complete this confidential Agitator Survey. Here’s why. As technology changes and competition increases,  many organizations are switching CRM database vendors and credit card payment processors. SURPRISE!  Many organizations making this switch are discovering to their shock […]

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