Award Winning Blog - Agitator

How Far Away Are Your Donors?

As one of my avocations, I publish a magazine in a small market with about 160,000 residents. It’s too fancy a publication for too small an audience in a world that’s going digital, so I lose some money. But I’d probably lose as much if I were addicted to golf or bought a boat, so […]

Learn More August 15, 2017

Is There No End To Stupid?

It’s no secret that in the not-too-distant future, organizations in the UK and the European Union could lose access to between 50% and 85% of their donors if they don’t get some form of permission — from those donors — to send communications. The Agitator has written about this here … offered a free download […]

Learn More August 14, 2017

August Course Corrections

On the one hand, the fundraising year is almost two-thirds over. On the other hand, the ‘highest yield’ third of the year is just about to begin. Many fundraisers are using the ‘lull before the storm’ to ready your fundraising weapons and reaffirm or fine-tune your fall/year-end fundraising tactics. And … revisit your fundraising projections. How […]

Learn More August 11, 2017

Winter is coming. How do you explain that to donors?

(Warning: spoilers for both Game of Thrones and fundraising success. If you aren’t a GoT fan, skip down to just below the picture) At first blush, Game of Thrones is 90% people fighting the wrong war: who gets to be on the throne, rather than the White Walkers. In fact, writers penned many a think-piece […]

Learn More August 10, 2017

How Dirty Are Your Fingernails?

On rainy weekends one of my simple but rewarding pleasures is pawing through my bookshelves, re-reading direct marketing and fundraising favorites. (Hey, it makes more sense to me than woodworking, stamp collecting or Tweeting.) This exercise not only provokes new insights, it serves to remind me that, for the day at least, I’m not on […]

Learn More

Are You Quarantining Your Major Donors?

“You’ll never get milk from a cow by sending it a letter.” That’s what my fundraising buddies told me 47 years ago when I left university major gift fundraising to help launch a new, direct mail-driven nonprofit called Common Cause. Sadly, too many development directors, major gift officers and CEOs still feel the same way. It’s […]

Learn More August 9, 2017