Award Winning Blog - Agitator

Ikea’s lesson for fundraisers

You may have heard that the Ingvar Kamprad, the founder of Ikea, passed away this weekend. His legacy is much more than the bookcases in my offices. One of the more obscure parts of an Ikea legacy is a cognitive bias called the Ikea Effect. Side note: you must be ingrained in the popular culture […]

Learn More February 1, 2018

Donors Are Ticked Off by Excess, Unrequested Solicitation – Who Knew?

Why do results decline as volume goes up? At a basic level, each new communication cannibalizes results from those communications around it. Looking at one study here, researchers found that each additional mailing generated 1.81 Euro in revenues, but that 1.21 Euros of that was cannibalized from future mailings. Thus, only 37% of the revenues […]

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Volume Has Been Tested. The Results Are In

Yesterday, I vented my spleen about the argument that volume leads to retention and that the volume of contact should be viewed as the lever to do so. Now, I’d like to put my case studies where my mouth is. Most of these are specific to mail. Why? Because that’s where the testing has been […]

Learn More January 31, 2018

How Not to Test Communication Volume

I’m a fan of M+R. Their free nonprofit tool shed is great for quick calculations for those who, like me, can’t do chi-square or t-tests, in their heads. Their yearly benchmarks are a must read every year. (And they are adding retention to it, which is a great addition.) They are also more open about […]

Learn More January 30, 2018

Volume: The Fundraising Assembly Line to Nowhere

Few topics yield more heat and shed less light than the debate over how frequently we should communicate with donors. Some fundraisers take the stance “mail more, make more.” Others –like The Agitator—feel the evidence is clear on the side of “mail less, make more”. Here, here, here and here. This week we’re wading back […]

Learn More January 29, 2018

Get Your Millennial Audience Off My Lawn

I’ve been reading The Agitator for years (part of why it’s been such a pleasure to write for this august blog). But I have a confession to make. Every time I saw posts like More On Millennials: 6 Ways To Entice Them and Time To Take Notice Of Millennials?, I wasn’t buying. To clarify, I […]

Learn More January 26, 2018