Award Winning Blog - Agitator

Roger’s Blood Pressure

For months now, I’ve been sensing the steady rise in Roger’s blood pressure. I’ve watched two things in particular get him agitated … First, the glacier-like pace (and that’s me being charitable) with which fundraisers have responded to declining donor retention rates. And second, not unrelated, the apparent diffidence (again, I’m being charitable in my choice of […]

Learn More February 27, 2017

Our Job Is to Piss You Off

And get you thinking. Apparently we’re succeeding, judging from the thoughtful comment by Tom Ahern in response to my post on feedback. Tom takes umbrage with my snarky and no doubt intemperate comments on what I described as somewhat superficial approaches to ‘donor centricity’, whatever that is. First, let me apologize for any language that came […]

Learn More February 24, 2017

Donor Centricity — The Missing Ingredient

No matter how much you try, you really can’ t call yourself ‘donor centric’ unless you’re actively seeking donor feedback. Yesterday I spent some fabulous hours with 30+ organizations separating the wheat from the chaff on what most of the trade — without real understanding and in vacuous terms — calls ‘donor centricity’. These folks […]

Learn More February 23, 2017

Who Will Get The Money?

In her comment on Monday’s Agitator post, 40 Nonprofit Trends, Gayle Gifford made a provocative point, which I hope might stir up some debate … “The overwhelming majority of US public charities, those small and medium sized organizations, simply don’t have the funds to compete for talented fund development staff or new technology to keep […]

Learn More February 22, 2017

Trump Is Actually Making America Great Again

Here at Agitator Global HQ we never know what’s going to pop out of the morning mail bag. Yesterday’s trove ( it was “Not My President Day” see in the U.S.) brought a gem from Agitator regular Pamela Grow who wrote: “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but it looks like Trump is actually making […]

Learn More February 21, 2017

40 Nonprofit Trends

I finally got around to reading Sean Norris’ compilation of 40 Nonprofit Trends for 2017, as published in NonProfitPRO. Part of me wants to ask, if there are actually 40 trends, is there any direction? Or are we talking chaos? But actually his list, reflecting the views of a few dozen nonprofit practitioners and commentators, makes […]

Learn More February 20, 2017