Award Winning Blog - Agitator

Exceptional Results From Exceptional Expenses

The old saw was that nobody ever got fired for buying IBM. Being part of the herd is a safe, comfortable place to be. But back on Tuesday, we talked about zigging where others zag by avoiding year-end matches to increase revenues. Now, there’s some concrete proof that doing what you’ve done before, and what […]

Learn More December 7, 2017

Getting to Your Year-end Gooooooooaaaaaaaal!

I bet it’s been at least a decade since you saw a mercury-based thermometer anywhere but the skeuomorphic version used on fundraising pages. We fundraisers are keeping a tradition alive. And with good reason. Unlike many “we’ve-always-done-it-this-way” techniques, this one has real science to back it up. In fact, you can probably increase your year-end revenues […]

Learn More December 6, 2017

A Soggy Box of Matches

Last year, I made the mistake of subscribing to the email newsletters of the top 100 nonprofits in the United States for end-of-year giving. The summary version of this story is that the average organization sent ten emails during December. And the emails were tough to differentiate by organization. For #Giving Tuesday almost every organization […]

Learn More December 5, 2017

Change, It Is a Comin’

Over the next two months we’ll be working behind the scenes on changes and additions to The Agitator. Changes in how we organize and present information. Additions to our content and additions in the opportunities for reader engagement. Our editorial content will primarily focus on our view of the changes we see as essential if […]

Learn More December 4, 2017

The 3,001st Post — Giving Thanks for Tom

Today’s post is The Agitator’s 3,001st. And my first without Tom beside me in this foxhole. After 10 years of conspiring on The Agitator it’s of course more than a bit sad and strange to be breaking the habit of checking each other’s work each day. Or bantering back and forth; sometimes seriously, sometimes irreverently, […]

Learn More December 1, 2017

I have bad news and, well…

I’m generally an optimist. Not a Panglossian “we live in the best of all possible worlds” optimist, but I think we can get to that world in the long term. But I’ll be darned if many of the fundraising trends seem to be pointed in the wrong direction. Here’s what I’ve been seeing; please leave […]

Learn More November 30, 2017