Award Winning Blog - Agitator

When All Else Fails: Merge

The general inability of large organizations to face change and flexibly deal with it hit home with this recent headline in Toronto’s Globe and Mail: Donation drop forces merger of Canada’s largest cancer charities, The merger of the Canadian Cancer Society (CCS) and the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation (CBCF) was triggered by revenue decline of 16% […]

Learn More February 13, 2017

The Rage-Donation

Ashley Fetters has written an interesting pice in GQ magazine titled, The Rise of the ‘Rage-Donation’. A fun read. What she’s talking about is the flood of post-election donations to nonprofits in the US. Here’s the opening … “Someone I know told me recently that he’s picked up a new habit since the election of Donald […]

Learn More February 10, 2017

Persona non grata

There’s an interesting piece at CMO.com called “Don’t Take It Personally, But Innovators Are Done With Personas.” In essence, leading for-profit CMOs are saying the same thing: giving a set of demographic and weak psychographic viewpoints a name and endeavoring toward it doesn’t work: “Traditional personas tell you very little because they are based on […]

Learn More February 9, 2017

Fake News. Fake Fundraising.

Sooner or later the fake news scams, hoaxes and parodies that marked this past campaign season on social media had to spill over into online fundraising. To refresh your short-term memory, you’ll recall the press chastising conservative Facebook users for sharing stories that had nothing to do with reality. Hundreds of thousands of people shared […]

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Is Not. Is.

This post is not a plug for Visme, although Visme does have a cool, user-friendly tool for creating infographics. However, it is a plug for infographics … and better data visualization in general by nonprofits. Every fundraising communication is fighting — desperately — for attention. Anything you do visually — photo, infographic, video — can […]

Learn More February 8, 2017

Rise Up! Fly In!

This is a Call to Action. The 100-year-old charitable tax deduction is under imminent threat and nonprofits are gearing up for a fight. Mark your calendar, alert your clients, your board, your CEO and urge them to participate in the “100 Years of Giving DC Fly-In” on February 15-16 to persuade Congress that it must […]

Learn More February 7, 2017