Award Winning Blog - Agitator

How Donors Choose Among Nonprofits: The Role of Identity: Part 2

This week, we’re looking back at previous posts and updating them with the state of the art. First up is a University of Kent study I reviewed a couple months ago. It found, in a nutshell, that donors tend to support charities that mean something to them personally. But that was just talking to people. […]

Learn More June 11, 2018

Donor Communications Control

We gave you Shakespeare. We gave you the Beatles. And in the fundraising world, we gave you Ken Burnett. So, it is with pride that us Brits claim our island as the birthplace of relationship fundraising. But it’s been a miserable few years for us British fundraisers. We’ve been beaten up in the media and […]

Learn More June 8, 2018

The context of donor surveys

We advocate strongly for asking donor commitment, satisfaction, preference, and/or identity immediately after first donation. One question we get is whether donors get turned off by these questions. On the contrary, most donors prefer that you know them and act like you know them. But we’ve all had someone ask for more personal information than […]

Learn More June 7, 2018

To Sin by Silence

“To sin by silence, when we should protest,/Makes cowards out of men.” – Ella Wheeler Wilcox The time: January 2016. Two venerable news organizations were taking on the practices of the Wounded Warrior Project. I’ll defer to the learned and studied words of Doug White’s report on the allegations against Wounded Warrior Project (WWP). Suffice it […]

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Letting Go of Donors

A couple weeks ago, I argued you haven’t truly acquired a donor until you get permission, information, or a second gift. Now let’s talk about the other end of the spectrum – when does your relationship with a donor end? This is an important subject for me, because most organizations of my acquaintance spend too […]

Learn More June 6, 2018

The Tragedy of the Donor Commons

“Picture a pasture open to all. It is to be expected that each herdsman will try to keep as many cattle as possible on the commons. … the rational herdsman concludes that the only sensible course for him to pursue is to add another animal to his herd. And another; and another… But this is […]

Learn More June 5, 2018