Award Winning Blog - Agitator

The Emotional Architecture of Giving

Show need, make it urgent, and never resolve it because if you show hope, you’ve given them a reason not to give. Nonsense. Research looked at nearly 10,000 campaigns across two crowdfunding platforms. The most successful appeals didn’t trap people in despair, they started negative and ended hopeful. On GoFundMe, campaigns that abide by this […]

Learn More August 27, 2025

Why Your Fundraising Test Probably “Won” by Luck & What to Do About It

It’s possible — maybe even likely — that your “winner” in a point-in-time fundraising A/B test didn’t win because of your headline, photo, or copy change. It probably won because of random noise. Before you yell at your screen that I’m an idiot (maybe true, but not for this reason), walk with me through the […]

Learn More August 25, 2025

Monthly Giving: The Lifeline We Keep Ignoring

I’ve been cleaning house. Not the dust and clutter kind, but the harder kind—going through old photos, boxes of files, the decades stacked like cordwood. “Death cleaning”, the Swedes call it. You sit with what you’ve carried, sort through the weight of your working life, and decide what still matters. In the midst of this, […]

Learn More August 22, 2025

Collapsing Conscientiousness? Collapsing Headlines Is More Like It

The Financial Times recently told us that young people’s personalities are “in freefall.” It’s the stuff generational bias dreams are made of. Here are the Big Five in brief: Conscientiousness: Reliability, follow-through, discipline. High scorers pay bills on time and floss. Neuroticism: Proneness to anxiety and stress. High scorers catastrophize emails. Agreeableness: Cooperativeness and empathy. […]

Learn More August 20, 2025

Bringing Back the Best of the Good Old Days

Forty years ago, when our kids were small, we’d pile into the car and head to the local Chili’s in Northern Virginia. Back then, it felt like the friendliest place on earth. The fajitas sizzled, the chips came out warm, and the servers remembered your name—or at least acted like they did. The place smelled […]

Learn More August 18, 2025

Good Stories Beat Good Ideas

The nonprofit sector has almost no barrier to entry and an unforgiving math problem: more organizations every year, fewer donors giving. The easy wins are gone and the noise has increased exponentially. The solution isn’t necessarily a bigger audience, a new program, or a sharper operational plan. It’s the story. Humans don’t just like stories, […]

Learn More August 15, 2025