Award Winning Blog - Agitator

Fundraising As A Driver Of Social Justice

On a hot August afternoon 46 years ago I dropped my first direct mail campaign at the main post office in Washington, D.C. The 250,000 envelopes contained a six-page letter that began “Everybody’s organized but the people…” announcing the formation of a new “citizens lobby” called Common Cause. It was a big gamble. Few organizations […]

Learn More August 17, 2016

Inspire With Video

Speaking from a fundraising perspective, I love online videos. For many reasons … creativity, often humor, delivery of raw emotion, ‘gotta see it’ urgency, connection. But the bottomline, stats like this from Mobile Cause: 57% of online donors make a gift after watching a video. Crowdfunding pages that are promoted by a video raise 4 times […]

Learn More August 16, 2016

Two Copywriting Treasures

To say Jerry Huntsinger, who recently celebrated his 83th birthday, is a direct mail copywriting genius, is an understatement. It’s like saying the late Steve Jobs ‘tinkered with electronic gadgets’. I’ve worked with Jerry for 45 years on literally hundreds of campaigns and Tom and I have frequently pointed readers toward Jerry’s copywriting wisdom ever […]

Learn More August 15, 2016

Ending The Week With A Fundraising Laugh

We’ve covered a lot of serious territory these past couple of weeks. So, on this summer Friday I’d prefer to wrap it up with a smile and a laugh. Thanks to another ‘goodie’ shoved into my mailbox by Pam Grow and relying on the wisdom of Quincy Jones, musician, humanitarian and all-around genius … why […]

Learn More August 12, 2016

Do we retain donors or burn donors?

Hello, world. I’m Nick Ellinger, the newest addition to the DonorVoice team. I’m excited to join an organization dedicated to improving donor experiences, increasing donor retention, and doing both with science-proven strategies. One of my pet questions is why retention is not taken more serious in the nonprofit world. Yes, we track it (sometimes), but […]

Learn More August 11, 2016

What Does Your CEO Need To Know?

Roger’s keen to deliver a message to nonprofit CEOs (and Boards). More than a ‘message’ actually. He basically wants to ‘water board’ them until they confess to total ignorance of and disregard of fundraising. Then, once they confess, put them on the path to redemption via education. So it seems to me one of the first […]

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