Award Winning Blog - Agitator

A Soggy Box of Matches

Last year, I made the mistake of subscribing to the email newsletters of the top 100 nonprofits in the United States for end-of-year giving. The summary version of this story is that the average organization sent ten emails during December. And the emails were tough to differentiate by organization. For #Giving Tuesday almost every organization […]

Learn More December 5, 2017

Change, It Is a Comin’

Over the next two months we’ll be working behind the scenes on changes and additions to The Agitator. Changes in how we organize and present information. Additions to our content and additions in the opportunities for reader engagement. Our editorial content will primarily focus on our view of the changes we see as essential if […]

Learn More December 4, 2017

The 3,001st Post — Giving Thanks for Tom

Today’s post is The Agitator’s 3,001st. And my first without Tom beside me in this foxhole. After 10 years of conspiring on The Agitator it’s of course more than a bit sad and strange to be breaking the habit of checking each other’s work each day. Or bantering back and forth; sometimes seriously, sometimes irreverently, […]

Learn More December 1, 2017

I have bad news and, well…

I’m generally an optimist. Not a Panglossian “we live in the best of all possible worlds” optimist, but I think we can get to that world in the long term. But I’ll be darned if many of the fundraising trends seem to be pointed in the wrong direction. Here’s what I’ve been seeing; please leave […]

Learn More November 30, 2017

Defend YOUR Internet Freedom. Act Today!

We have very little time to stop Donald Trump and the Republicans in their attempt to restrict American freedom and destroy the Internet as we know it. At stake is nothing less than control of a crucial public resource – the Internet. The administration’s goal is to hand over control to corporations that will then be able […]

Learn More November 28, 2017

Time To Go To Jail?

It’s been years since I was tear-gassed, arrested and tossed in jail for something worth fighting for. And the same holds for the leaders of most causes I support. Is that a sign that most nonprofits have become too much a part of the establishment, too much a part of the problem? In short, is it […]

Learn More November 27, 2017