Award Winning Blog - Agitator

(Lack of) Speed Kills

When Amazon started, people were nervous about providing a credit card number in hope that their books would arrive. (Don’t @ me, 25-and-unders, this was a real thing.) Will my book arrive? Will it be what I intended? Is this whole Internet thing a scam? So a large part of Amazon’s infrastructure works to convince […]

Learn More April 5, 2018

The Neuroscience of Donor Services

Why do we care about donor service? Let’s delve into our donors’ brains to find out. You! Put down that hacksaw! I was speaking metaphorically! Picture any decision you make as a debate between “pull towards” and “push away.” The pull comes from our nucleus accumbens. The nucleus accumbens – think of this as your […]

Learn More April 4, 2018

The Value of “Random Amazement”

This week Nick and I deal with the critically important function of “Donor Service.” Let’s start with this fundamental question: Do you really know what good donor service looks like? I sure hope so, because as we’ve reported before, nearly 20% of all donors who drop out quit because of lousy donor service. Consequently, any […]

Learn More April 3, 2018

Are You Behaving Like Facebook?

Seems as though all the world– the press, Congress, the European Union, advertisers, competitors and millions of users themselves—are focused on Facebook’s privacy and data practices. This is a great opportunity to look at privacy and data practices in our own sector. Sadly, many nonprofits behave like Facebook. They share and rent data without asking. They […]

Learn More April 2, 2018

Podcasting: Unicorn or Real Opportunity?

A new TV series, Alex, Inc. debuted this week. It’s about the founding of the real-life podcast Startup which covers the founding and early days of Gimlet Media. Gimlet produces podcasts that are downloaded 12 million times a month. Now that the subject of ”podcasting” has hit the cultural mainstream of television, it’s long overdue […]

Learn More March 30, 2018

Ask them. Ask them every time.

I for one am shocked – shocked! – in the revelations that Facebook has treated our data with all the care of a four-year-old with a new Hot Wheel. (Let’s see what happens when we run a user’s personal information OFF A RAMP AND DOWN THE STAIRS!) After all, packaging these data for ads is […]

Learn More March 29, 2018