Award Winning Blog - Agitator

A Second Chance for Fundraisers

Relationship Fundraising is like teenage sex: Everyone talks about it, nobody really knows how to do it, everyone thinks everyone else is doing it, so everyone claims they are doing it too. Although I’m paraphrasing behavioral economist Dan Ariely’s take on “Big Data” the same insight applies to the much-touted, little-practiced concept of relationship fundraising. It’s […]

Learn More September 13, 2017

Getting your finance department to sign off on restricted giving

Allowing donors to restrict their gifts increases giving, even though very few donors choose to exercise the option. (see for example here and here) This is partly because donors like control of things (see DonorVoice’s Dr. Kiki Koutmeridou discussion of how donor control can get people to opt in here) and partly because the ability […]

Learn More September 7, 2017

What Flood Waters Can’t Conceal

Like millions of folks a good deal of my attention over the past 10 days has focused on the rising waters and the flood of destruction and misery inflicted on the people and animals of Houston by Hurricane Harvey. As we await developments surrounding a potentially fresh disaster– Hurricane Irma now barreling toward the U.S. — […]

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Monthly Giving Part 3- The Great Recordkeeping and Payment Processing Barrier

There’s no question that solid recordkeeping and donor processing systems form an essential foundation for successful monthly giving programs. And, given today’s ready availability of off-the-shelf CRM software and flexible payment processors much-feared complexity of managing monthly giving programs is no longer a valid excuse for jumping in. Before I get to some of options […]

Learn More September 1, 2017

How to prevent donations using behavioral science

There are a bold few nonprofits who have decided they have enough donations. Instead of using behavioral science to increase their donations, they are using it to dissuade people from donating. Let’s look at some of their tactics so that we might also lower donations (anonymized, of course, as I’ve donated to several of these […]

Learn More August 31, 2017

Monthly Giving Part 2- Setting Goals and Getting Started

My intention in this series is not to provide a detailed “how to” for building a monthly giving program. Rather, the goal is to point you to resources I believe will prove of help and value. Here goes. Setting Goals. When it comes to setting goals for a start-up monthly giving program keep it simple. […]

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