Award Winning Blog - Agitator

Storytelling In The Digital Age

Even though Tom persuaded me to give up working with cave art and stone tablets when we ‘modernized’ the Agitator offices, we’ve never lost interest in the power and importance of storytelling. It’s just that we now have paper and digital bits and bytes for the all-important fundraising task of tale-telling. Over the years we’ve […]

Learn More September 29, 2017

Gender, generation, or ideology: which segmentation is most valuable?

Segmentation’s goal should be to put similar groups together. You might have a lapsed donor segment, because a male lapsed donor looks more like a female lapsed donor than he looks like a male active donor, for example. This came to mind when I was looking at NonProfit Tech for Good’s Data for Good. This […]

Learn More September 28, 2017

Putting Your Emails In Context

It’s tempting to think fanatize that our donors and donor prospects are hovering over their favorite digital device, eagerly awaiting each and every one of our fundraising messages … and of course ignoring all that other ‘clutter’ sent by others. Of course such vigilance is a fantasy. I’m sure no Agitator readers are mistaken about […]

Learn More September 27, 2017

Yikes … Fundraisers Make Way For Marketers!

Here’s the NY Times headline that caught my attention: To Sell Themselves to Donors, Nonprofits Are Turning to the Pros. Wow! I thought … I’m about to find some real breakthrough thinking. Can’t wait to see who are these “pros” are? Don’t get me wrong, I do agree that nonprofits can communicate in ways that obscure […]

Learn More September 26, 2017

A Better Alternative To #GivingTuesday

Tom’s already grumping about #GivingTuesday and it’s months away. I’m not a big fan either. But I am blessed with a far gentler, docile disposition. So, in the interest of foregoing a rant and instead give Agitator readers a head start on a better alternative to #GivingTuesday I refer you to a post we ran […]

Learn More September 25, 2017

Is the best donor information bought or told?

The TL;DR version: the best information is told. It’s not bought from outside providers nor does it live in a transactional database. But I’m guessing you tuned in for something a bit more in-depth, so there are three big reasons why: The predictive ability of external data is spotty at best. I recently got done […]

Learn More September 21, 2017