Award Winning Blog - Agitator

From Michelangelo to Match Offers: A Short History of Decline and How to Fix It

Over the last twenty years, marketing effectiveness has fallen sharply. Campaigns, ads, and fundraising appeals are moving fewer people to act, even as budgets and frequency continue to rise. The pattern is unmistakable. It’s not just that everything looks and sounds the same; it’s that much of what’s being repeated is simply bad. Almost nine […]

Learn More November 7, 2025

Ask Less, Commit More

One. That’s the modal number of gifts per year from your one-off donors. File averages hover around 1.6. If you get a donor to give twice, you’re a hero. The prevailing method for earning that cape has been volume, early and often. Consider a close encounters moment. If an alien were told to get humans to […]

Learn More November 5, 2025

The Fundraising Story Is A Mirror, Not An Exhibit

The sector says it wants authentic stories and to avoid “poverty porn.” Both goals sound virtuous but neither has much meaning until you define what authenticity looks like or why some stories cross the line from empathy to voyeurism. Much stortelling best practice the equivalent of hosting a moral zoo. The beneficiary becomes the exhibit, […]

Learn More November 3, 2025

Who You Send It To vs. Who It’s For

Who do I send this appeal to? vs. What do I send to this person? Both sound similar are are about communication, segmentation, planning. But they represent entirely different ways of thinking. The first question treats the donor as a distribution problem, a targeting exercise. The process is logical, efficient, and deeply familiar. The second […]

Learn More October 31, 2025

Dear “Donor”: Stop Calling Me What I Don’t Feel Like

Teachers were asked by their school district to complete a survey. The experiment was a 2×2 design (one of our faves): The result? A nothingburger. No difference in survey participation between A-D, randomly assigned groups. But when researchers looked at an external variable, teacher effectiveness, the picture changed. More effective teachers, who were evenly spread […]

Learn More October 29, 2025

Donate, Donate, Donate – In Case You Missed the First One.

You need to repeat the ask. That’s one of the more durable recommendations I see, passed down like gospel. What’s to be inferred from this? Donors won’t notice the ask unless it’s repeated? They won’t know the intent absent many asks? Maybe its once for awareness, twice for clarity, three times for action? But what […]

Learn More October 27, 2025