Award Winning Blog - Agitator

Is your online donation experience burning donors?

Back in October, we make the argument that we aren’t retaining donors; we’re burning them. That is, because humans are loss averse, if you want someone to pay attention to an issue, it’s better to talk about avoiding losing something than keeping something. I’m now thinking that the same applies to online donations. Right now, […]

Learn More April 6, 2017

Tiny Clues Build Trust

Nothing is more essential to donor commitment and retention than trust. Let’s posit that a donation is a (at least implied) ‘compact’ with a donor that your nonprofit is going to wisely use that person’s contribution to further his or her charitable aspiration or goal. Perhaps not a great deal of consideration of trustworthiness went into giving […]

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Floss Your Donors

I read Tom’s My Shiny New Gadget while sitting in the dentist’s waiting room. On the one hand he chronicles the rapidly increasing numbers of new nonprofits who are likely to need all the fundamental advice they can get. On the other hand Tom admits he’s bored with basics. Instead he’s intrigued with the findings of neuroscience and how […]

Learn More April 5, 2017

My Shiny New Gadget

I’m a bit reluctant as I begin to write this post. It’s about neuroscience insights into effective advertising … based on research in India! How far could that exotica (erotica?) be from our present pre-occupation with the hard core survival issues of fundraising, like donor retention and measuring lifetime value? The recent drift of Agitator comments […]

Learn More April 4, 2017

Herbicide For Donors

The gardening catalogs, those heralds of Spring, are piling up on my desk. I’m way behind in ordering. Part of the reason the delay is that for many organizations where I volunteer, it’s budget time. And paying attention and advising them on their budget priorities is far more important than ordering the latest hybrid tea […]

Learn More April 3, 2017

Increasing face-to-face donor retention

It’s no secret that face-to-face donor retention is extremely challenging. Your fundraisers aren’t meeting cultivated lists of people — they meeting random people on the street. (OK, not totally random — they are placed in areas to maximize their potential success and screen people based on what they look to be. But these are imperfect […]

Learn More March 31, 2017