Award Winning Blog - Agitator

Summer Doldrums Threat #1: Branding

Sooner or later someone in your organization, totally devoid of fundraising knowledge (likely a board member or the spouse of one), is going to come back from their summer break with a ‘brilliant idea’. In fact, over many summers, many ‘brilliant’ ideas have crossed The Agitator’s desks. So, we’ve gone back through the archives and will share some of […]

Learn More July 20, 2017

Are You A Fundraising Professional?

Be careful before you answer. It might be a trick question. I’m sure all Agitator readers regard themselves as ‘professional’, at least in the sense of making some ongoing, applied effort to be seriously competent — i.e. not regarded as a dilettante. But now consider this passage from a recent blog post by fundraiser extraordinaire, Giles […]

Learn More July 19, 2017

Frequency Of Giving

I was browsing through the interesting ‘dashboard’ on online giving compiled by Network for Good and published monthly by the Chronicle on Philanthropy. The latest update reported 20% more donors and 20.9% more donations in June 2017 over June 2016. My first reaction was … great to see this sizeable bump in the number of […]

Learn More July 18, 2017

“We’re Not Like This … Are We?”

Innovation and progress come not from working harder, but by working smarter and taking an axe to the time wasters and the trivial. Most of all, stop focusing on the trivial. If I had a nickel for every hour I’ve witnessed trivial debates over orange vs. blue envelopes, or closed-face vs. window envelopes, I could […]

Learn More July 17, 2017

Rejoice In The ‘Trump Bump’, BUT Prepare Now For The ‘Trump Slump’

The election of Donald Trump has served as a booster rocket for giving to groups on both the left and right. Same with the intent to continue giving which is at record levels — also on both sides of the ideological spectrum — according to this report in Fast Company. Right now — not six months […]

Learn More July 14, 2017

There’s a complaint born every minute…

No, it’s not anyone-you-know’s Twitter feed… It’s the rate at which donors asked to be removed from charity solicitation lists on a new UK government hotline. The full story is here. Now, here in the good ol’ US of A, we have neither a hotline nor the regulations requiring explicit opting in to communications that […]

Learn More July 13, 2017