Award Winning Blog - Agitator

How To Organize For Miracles

“Craver, it’s perfectly fine to believe in miracles, but let me tell you, it sure helps to organize for them.” With those words my first fundraising mentor left me with an indelible understanding that while great things can and do happen, the probability of success increases markedly with careful and meticulous planning. Which brings me to […]

Learn More May 22, 2017

Who’s Using Social Media?

Roger has laid some heavy-duty reading on the table this week with his posts here and here on sustainer programs. And those are just the Cliff Notes on the exhaustive Sustainers in Focus report prepared by Blackbaud, which you can download here. The Agitator can’t think of much that’s more critical to your fundraising success than building […]

Learn More May 19, 2017

The cost of costless communication

It costs money to send an extra person an extra mail piece. It costs no money to send an extra person an extra email. So it’s natural to get logorrhea online and have a default of sending more to more. But it turns out this does have a cost: $24,522. That’s the amount that the […]

Learn More May 18, 2017

Spotlight On Sustainers: Part 2

Today we focus on research-based best practices — not anecdotes and tribal wisdom — of what produces significant results in launching and growing sustainer programs. Yesterday, in Part 1 of the Blackbaud Institute’s Sustainers in Focus, the spotlight was on the financial pros, cons and myths surrounding monthly giving programs. Having shown the undeniable value of […]

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Spotlight On Sustainers – Part One

Way back in 2011 I reported on The Future of Fundraising, a monumental session of brainiacs hosted by Blackbaud and summarized by Adrian Sargeant that sets forth needed changes if our sector is to grow and thrive. It’s well worth reading the summary to see how far we’ve come — or not — in the past six […]

Learn More May 17, 2017

“I Asked A Simple Question Online This Week”

“I Asked a Simple Question Online” wrote Tom Ahern earlier this week. Here’s the question the master donor communicator asked: . “Which charity is doing the most for Syrian refugees?” The answers were anything but simple. Here’s what he found out and he’s given The Agitator permission to reprint the whole sorry story verbatim from his […]

Learn More May 16, 2017