Award Winning Blog - Agitator

Agitator Cliff Notes: What’s Next?

I wanted to find another book to talk about today. But the problem wasn’t finding a book; it was narrowing it down to just one. So let’s hear your votes in the Comments on two things: Is this Agitator Cliff Notes approach worthwhile and worth doing again? What book(s) do you recommend? Roger has sent […]

Learn More May 5, 2018

When Have You Acquired a Donor?

When you received their donation, right? Once you have their sweet sweet cheddar in your bank account, the person has made a donation. Thus they are a donor. They have been acquired. Q.E.D. On to the next blog post. But let’s consider this in reverse. You go to a new restaurant. It’s so horrid you […]

Learn More May 4, 2018

iBlackHole

The new M+R Benchmarking data are out; I highly recommend them. I was looking to do a summary of them for you but, as with my Agitator post today, got stuck on one chart: That’s right. The average mobile donation page conversion rate is single digits. This is why while mobile website traffic is the […]

Learn More May 3, 2018

Breaking Down Your Acquisition Silos

You can spend money on anything. That’s why it’s called money. Economists call this fungibility, which has nothing to do with mushrooms. It has everything to do with how a dollar can be used for rent or food or entertainment or whatever. In our minds, though, we hate fungibility. People have sophisticated mental jars of […]

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What to Do When Cost-to-Acquire Lies to You

I’ve argued cost-to-acquire (CTA) and lifetime value were the two metrics that mattered most. The idea is that if lifetime value is going to be higher than the cost of acquiring, acquire that donor. If not, you need lower acquisition costs or higher lifetime value. That makes great sense as far as it goes. The […]

Learn More May 2, 2018

What Your Board Should Learn from Starbucks

There’s no question in my mind that a great deal of the furor over the ‘high cost of fundraising’ on the part boards, CEOs, watchdog groups, the press, regulators and many fundraisers themselves stems mostly from ignorance. Ignorance about what “acquisition” is, how it should be measured, and when or whether its costs should be […]

Learn More May 1, 2018