Award Winning Blog - Agitator

What You Need to Know from the 2018 Fundraising Effectiveness Project Report: The Bad News

“Everybody wants happiness, nobody wants pain; but there can’t be a rainbow without a little rain.” – Dolly Parton Yesterday, rainbow; today, rain… Donor retention is at best flat and generally down. We are stuck at 45.5% donor retention for the second year in a row, down from 45.9% in 2015 and down from 46.7% […]

Learn More April 26, 2018

What You Need to Know from the 2018 Fundraising Effectiveness Project Report: The Good News

It’s that time of the year again – when we look back on the year that was and assess where we are as a sector and what we can do better. Thanks as ever to AFP, DonorTrends, and partner organizations who provide the data. Today, I’m going to talk good news; tomorrow, bad news; and […]

Learn More April 25, 2018

The Importance of Villains and the Danger of Dead Armadillos

Yesterday’s post reporting the Edge Research Study on Reactive Giving reminded me of the importance of having a villain to push against. A villain serves as a rallying point for like-minded folks/donors to rally against. A villain focuses your message in a way an objective, fair and balanced, approach never can. In fact, after decades as […]

Learn More April 24, 2018

Raging All The Way To The Bank

“I’m not a rageful person. But things going on right now have elicited rage. I’m very upset at situations people are being put in.” That statement is from a respondent in a study released last week by Edge Research titled Reactive Giving: Understanding the Surge in Cause- Related Giving. Download the full study here. The […]

Learn More April 23, 2018

Key Fundraising Ingredients

What better way to end the week than with Dilbert; sent along by the ghost of Tom Belford who hovers like a hawk over The Agitator. A reminder that all the great research, advice, and case studies available to fundraisers ain’t worth much without investing the time and toil required to put them to work […]

Learn More April 20, 2018

What people will tell you that algorithms won’t

Predictive analytics are generally very good, to the point that people are living in different product bubbles from their neighbors. (In Weapons of Math Destruction, Cathy O’Neil tells the story of an investor saying that their new technology would make sure he would “never have to see another ad for the University of Phoenix.”) But […]

Learn More April 19, 2018